Good stuff. (I’m glad that someone read what I wrote back in ‘03.) Two comments:

1) I’m happy to say that our current economic downturn has not hit CI as hard as it did when I wrote that article five years ago. On the contrary, I am seeing almost no cuts in established CI units now. In fact, in the past year or two, there has been a marked increase in the quality of CI jobs being created, and this trend continues through the downturn (as I have seen 2-3 great jobs in the last few months).

2) CI is not dead, although all of your reasons you cited for its misuse are exactly right. In many companies, there is too much attention paid to information collection and not nearly enough paid to forward-looking analysis. And the wrong people were indeed hired in many instances. In a lot of companies, CI has withered away because it was done halfway and on the cheap. In the higher-quality job openings that I mentioned above, however, this is not the case. CI is being elevated to a strategic level and being staffed accordingly. (Sadly, only a handful of CI practitioners are qualified for these jobs, and many are being filled by former strategy consultants, and others with a more strategic view.)

In the grand scheme of things, the number of companies that “get it” when it comes to doing CI correctly remains very small. On a positive note, however, I think this number is steadily increasing. While growth for CI will be slower than when it was the “latest hot trend” earlier in this decade, I think this type of growth is better for the profession, and definitely better for those companies who recognize the difference.