Territorial Intelligence, a Collective Challenge for Sustainable Development: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Territorial Intelligence is a practice devoted to obtaining, analysing and valuing information and knowledge about a territory and its environment to design and implement territorial plans on strategic matters. The purpose of this article is to provide a broad overview about the meaning of Territorial Intelligence in academic literature covering the definitions of the concept and the main topics involved. A scoping review following the PRISMA-ScR method has been carried out. Online databases were used to identify scientific articles and theses published between 2000 and 2020, from which, after screening, 33 key documents were selected, mainly of French origin. Qualitative analyses were performed following the technique of the Seven Key Questions (7W). Territorial Intelligence began in France as an application of Economic Intelligence, but it is becoming an autonomous discipline, expanding to other countries and generating specific applications, such as Tourist Intelligence, in the last decade. It is concluded that three elements characterize current Territorial Intelligence: the consideration as a collective process that involves the participation of multiple agents, the integration of external sources of information with territorial agents’ own internal knowledge and a focus on collaboration to promote sustainable development with a global vision.

1. Introduction

In its most general conception, intelligence is understood as any knowledge-producing process intended for decision-making. The modern intelligence approach is interdisciplinary and aims to theoretically and methodologically improve its purpose as a sociotechnical device, either by borrowing from disciplines that have their own methods or by exploiting and improving existing models or even creating new ones. Information and Communication sciences seem to have a major role to play in this context (Bullinge 2013).

Following Sherman Kent’s seminal contributions (Kent 1949), intelligence is simultaneously knowledge, an activity, and an organization. Intelligence is not simply a profession, but, like most professions, it has undertaken the aspects of a discipline: it has developed a recognized methodology; its own vocabulary; and a body of theory and doctrine; additionally, it has elaborated and refined techniques (Kent 1955).

Strategic intelligence is a systematic and continuous process of producing needed intelligence of strategic value in an actionable form to facilitate long-term decision making (GIA 2004a). So, intelligence is an enabler of strategy. It provides a baseline of information on which to build plans and projects considering potential reactions by others—both adversaries and neutrals—to those plans, and helping strategists evaluate the feasibility of proposed courses of action (Aclin 2012). The concept of strategic intelligence is closely linked with military strategies. It has been considered as a specific, coded, secret and hidden knowledge that some military and government entities handle, conceived as a product integrated into the national security and development of a country (Garden 2003).

In the current context, economic, social and cultural networks, along with territorial collectivities, the states and their administrations and companies, are challenged to understand the dynamics of their environment to identify and analyse the threats, risks and development opportunities to drive differentiation, power and influence strategies (Clerc 2012). The intelligence subdomain that studies how to support strategic decisions in the business environment is named Competitive Intelligence; while the one that contributes to make strategic decisions as a country or region is known as Economic Intelligence.

Competitive Intelligence is the process of obtaining, analysing, interpreting, and disseminating information of strategic value about the industry and its competitors, which is transmitted to decision-makers in a timely manner (Gibbons and Prescott 1996). In academic literature, the authors of reference have focused on the fact that Competitive Intelligence facilitates short and long-term planning (Ettore 1995), reveals the intentions of competitors (Cottrill 1998), allows identifying opportunities and reducing risks (Valentim et al. 2003), facilitates decision-making that leads to action (GIA 2004b) and helps companies to compete better (McGonagle 2014). This is achieved by referencing the current state of the company, customers, competitors, suppliers and all the related agents in the value chain, as well as identifying economic, social, technological, market, competition and labour variables, in order to know the dynamic environment and changing reality (Aguirre 2015). Perhaps the definition that best summarizes all these characteristics is that proposed by the GIA (2005): Competitive Intelligence is the ethical and systematic process of collecting information, analysis and dissemination that is pertinent, accurate, specific, timely, predictable and active about the business environment, the competitors and the organization itself.

Economic Intelligence encompasses the activities of the State to defend its economic interests in the international framework. Discussions on how regional and sectoral economic development can be enhanced through government intelligence activities have been carried out for years (Calof 2016). Finally, a broad consensus has been reached that Economic Intelligence must be based on four pillars: encouraging this practice at the company level; optimizing the transfer of information between the public and private sector; building databases in light of user needs; and mobilizing the world of training and education (Díaz 2013).

Economic Intelligence has traditionally taken the nation-state as its field of action. The globalization of the markets, the integration of the States in international structures and the internal national decentralization processes in the last two decades have contributed to shifting the focus from Economic Intelligence towards other geopolitical territories, like supranational regions and subnational administrative divisions. A territory can be defined as the intersection between a physical space and a network of actors (institutional network on the political and administrative level, large companies, techno-poles, managers in the economic field, associative network and so on) that play a role in it (Ferchaud 2002). It is, following Dumas (2006), “a space of significant relationships”. The territory is gradually envisioned as a space where knowledge-based actions can be organized, making it necessary to develop an information and communication system (Torra 2013).

The term Territorial Intelligence (TI) was proposed in 1998 to give a scientific dimension to the Catalyse experience, designed and developed in Besançon (France) within the Third European Program to Fight Poverty, to understand and solve the needs of the vulnerable populations in the French department of Doubs by all the actors involved (Girardot 2010). Catalyse participants developed an action-research method that contains technological, statistical and spatial diagnostic and evaluation tools and techniques that combine quantitative, qualitative and spatial approaches, respecting the principles of participation, global approach and partnership. In accordance with the logic of sustainable development, the “diagnosis” is established based on the needs of the people and not only according to the capacities of the actors. The results of the analyses lead to action projects defined by the actors involved and founded in the detected needs. The techniques proposed by Catalyse quickly spread throughout France and other countries in the 21st century to face other economic and social challenges of a territory.

TI was, in its beginnings, a sub-discipline of Economic Intelligence that aimed to obtain, analyse and value information and knowledge about the environment intended to promote the development of a territory, paying special attention to identifying opportunities and assessing risks. TI has as its subject the territorial community and it is aimed at sustainable development (Girardot 2008). TI is also in charge of the coordinated management of the information and knowledge generated by political, social and economic actors (public and private), in order to avoid its loss and achieve optimal use and alignment, thus realizing territorial collective plans on matters considered strategic. It should be noted that what is difficult for intelligence applied to companies is even more difficult for the territories due to the multiplicity of types of actors, their strategies, complex relationships, power problems, media logic or even problems related to intercultural communication (Moinet 2009).

TI is a highly polysemic concept (Girardot 2008). Pelissier and Pybourdin (2009) indicated that the content and contours of Territorial Intelligence was an ongoing process. Mallowan and Marcon (2010) highlighted that debates on it were still open. Ten years later, the concept of TI involves two new dimensions: the transition from a strictly economic vision to one focused on sustainable development, and the introduction of the collaboration paradigm versus the competition paradigm. While admitting that Economic Intelligence has traditionally been part of a logic of competitive aggressiveness, these practices are increasingly giving way to coopetition strategies (Salvetat and Le Roy 2007). TI has evolved from its original methodologies close to Competitive Intelligence to others in which collective intelligence prevails: as Bourret and Meyer (2014) proposed, TI “is a form of collective intelligence developed on and around a territory to think about and act on it”. We move around the concept of “learning region” (Asheim 1996), related mainly to collective learning at the level of regional clusters and networks to promote development and competitiveness in a given territory.

The process of collective intelligence arises from a group of individuals, when the information is collected, selected, interpreted and compared through collective work so as to make sense (de Almeida and Lescab 2019). Collective intelligence implies the sharing of information, a respect for common rules, the multiplication of interactions and social connections in order to develop collaborative practices to increase performance, the gains of which will be equitably distributed between the different members engaged in the co-construction (Frimousse and Peretti 2019). Knowledge creation and dissemination are based on the existence of social relationships, shared identity and common languages (Dibiaggio and Meschi 2010).

Territories are facing great transformations, with an environment in permanent technological evolution, facing economic crises such as that of 2008 and that caused by COVID-19 and increasingly tangible threats such as the effects of climate change. The social relevance of our research lies in the need to make a base point for the discipline of Territorial Intelligence. After a vast scientific production at the beginning of the 21st century, the need to relaunch it can be a meeting point around which to mobilize collaborative projects for territories to face their challenges in better conditions in the immediate future.

The objective of this scoping review is to provide a broad overview about the meaning of Territorial Intelligence in academic literature covering the definitions of the concept (intension and extension) and the main topics involved. The scientific approach to TI has the function of integrating and developing multidisciplinary knowledge and the necessary methods to understand the territorial structures, the territorial systems and the dynamics of the territories (Soulier et al. 2011). In particular, our research question was: what does literature tell us about the evolution of TI’s concept from competitive to collaborative intelligence and from an economic dimension to a global vision?

The research exposed in this manuscript seeks to answer this question and covers an important research gap. Exhaustive reviews and bibliometric analysis about Competitive Intelligence have been performed (Leitzelman and Soulier 2009; Aguirre 2015; Du Toit 2015; Shujahat et al. 2017; do Prado and de Campos 2018; López-Robles et al. 2018, 2019, 2020). However, the reviews conducted in the area of Economic Intelligence (Hardy 2011), Collective Intelligence (Søilen 2019) and Territorial Intelligence (Bertacchini 2010; Perea-Medina et al. 2018) have not been carried out with the exhaustiveness and the purpose that the use of standard academic reviews methodologies like those suggested by PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) implies (Tricco et al. 2018).

The absence of studies of these characteristics in the field of Territorial Intelligence motivates the conduction of this scoping review. Scoping reviews follow a systematic approach to map evidence on a matter and identify main concepts, theories, sources, and knowledge gaps (Tricco et al. 2018) and are currently being used as precursors to systematic reviews (Anderson et al. 2008), helping to recognize evidences in a given field, clarifying key concepts in the literature (Munn et al. 2018), identifying the conceptual boundaries of a topic (Arksey and O’Malley 2005) and informing future researches (Tricco et al. 2016b).

The scoping review to explore the existing academic literature on a subject is the most appropriate review methodology to reach relevant conclusions when the topic has not yet been extensively reviewed (Mays et al. 2001) and to examine emerging areas (Tricco et al. 2016a), as in the case of TI. Scoping reviews are useful for answering broad questions such as “what information has been presented on this topic in the literature?” (Sucharew and Macaluso 2019). The end product of a scoping review is typically a narrative presentation, with minimal or limited statistical information, which can serve as a richly informed starting point for further investigations to understand and contribute to research, education, practice, and policy (Peterson et al. 2017). Therefore, a scoping review can also be an “useful precursor of systematic reviews” (Munn et al. 2018) that can be carried out when the scientific production of a research area increases in the future, without questioning the validity and pertinence of the results obtained about the current state of a subject and its original contribution to the literature.

The paper presented is structured as follows: identification of a relevant research problem from a review of literature focused on the discipline of intelligence and its different fields of application (Section 1); explanation of the methodology used (Section 2); presentation and discussion of results (Section 3); and, finally, conclusions and implications of the findings (Section 4).

2. Materials and Methods

Scoping reviews are one of the knowledge synthesis methods (Grant and Booth 2009; Tricco et al. 2016a) whose framework has evolved more in recent years (Arksey and O’Malley 2005; Levac et al. 2010; Tricco et al. 2018; Peters et al. 2020). Scoping studies seek to map the key concepts underpinning a research area and the main available sources and evidences, searching, selecting and synthesizing existing knowledge (Colquhoun et al. 2014).

There is an ongoing need and interest for advancement of this methodology (O’Brien et al. 2016); over the last two decades, scoping studies have become an increasingly common search method for literature on a specific topic (Daudt et al. 2013). They can be undertaken as standalone projects, especially where an area is complex or has not been reviewed comprehensively before (Arksey and O’Malley 2005). Well-done scoping reviews contribute to conceptual clarification and definitions (Davis et al. 2009).

Strengths associated with scoping study methodology include their flexibility, the inclusion of published and grey literature, the inclusion of literature with a wide range of study designs and methodologies and the potential to combine qualitative and quantitative synthesis approaches (O’Brien et al. 2016). In this sense, because of the nature of scoping review questions, they are useful to bring together evidence from heterogeneous sources (Peters et al. 2020), allowing a more general question and exploration of related literature rather than focusing on providing answers to a more limited question (Moher et al. 2015) and they are an appropriate alternative to a systematic review when literature is complex (Grimshaw 2008).

Our scoping review was carried out based on the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews, PRISMA-ScR (Tricco et al. 2018). PRISMA is the work of a group of experts who identified the minimum reporting criteria for systematic reviews that would represent a high-quality scientific publication. PRISMA-ScR is the extension created to support author teams in adhering to best practice when preparing their scoping projects for publication.

PRISMA methodology requires specification of characteristics of the sources of evidence used as eligibility criteria. In our case, inclusion and exclusion criteria were specified in advance and documented as shown in

Table 1. Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion Criteria	Exclusion Criteria
Research studies published in scientific journals. Quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods. Doctoral theses. Published between the period of 2000–2020.	Conference. Proceedings. Books and chapters.
Written in English, French, Spanish or Portuguese. Focused on Territorial Intelligence.

.

Conference proceedings were excluded because in sciences the quality of the papers published is not usually as high as that of scientific and academic journals and, in many cases, they are previous works. Also, the diffusion in the scientific community and the impact factor of proceedings, books and chapters are lower.

Since comprehensiveness is the whole point of scoping the field (Arksey and O’Malley 2005), an exhaustive search was carried out between October 2019 and 3 April 2020, as described in

Table 2. Search process.

General databases	Scopus (www.scopus.com) Web of Science (https://apps.webofknowledge.com/) ProQuest (https://www.proquest.com/)
Specialized databases	Archive ouverte en Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société (HAL) (https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/) CAIRN (https://www.cairn.info/) ABI/inform (https://www.proquest.com/) EconLit (https://www.proquest.com/) inDICEs CSIC (https://indices.csic.es/) SciELO (https://scielo.org/es/)
Dissertation databases	ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (https://www.proquest.com/) THESES (http://www.theses.fr/) TESEO (https://www.educacion.gob.es/teseo/irGestionarConsulta.do)
Descriptors	Territorial Intelligence and its French, Spanish and Portuguese equivalents. Territorial Economic Intelligence and its French, Spanish and Portuguese equivalents.
Search strategies	“Territorial Intelligence” OR “Intelligence Territoriale” OR “Inteligencia Territorial” in Title, Abstract and Keywords. “Territorial Economic Intelligence” OR “Intelligence Économique Territoriale” OR “Inteligencia Económica Territorial” OR “Inteligencia Económico Territorial” in Title, Abstract and Keywords.
Filters	Document type in general and specialized databases: articles Period: 2000–2020

.

Once the inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, the literature search resulted in 1011 citations: 877 from scientific data bases and 134 from dissertation databases. The final search results were exported into EndNote, and duplicates were removed by the information specialist of the research team; the detection and elimination of duplicate studies removed 513 citations and, so, 498 remained.

Evidence screening was later on carried out based on title and abstract examination. After screening, 395 physical and human geographical studies of specific territories and articles about information technologies (e.g., Geographic Information Systems, Big Data…) were excluded to limit to the discipline of intelligence.

The results of the searches in the general databases and in the specialized databases in Economy show an unexpectedly low presence of articles from countries with a wide scientific production in the Social Sciences, such as Germany, Italy and the rest of the Central European and Nordic countries, as well as a predominance of items from France. For example, the search in Scopus yielded 56 results with a total of 78 authors, which are distributed according to the country of their institutional affiliation as follows: 24 from France, 8 from Italy, 8 from Spain, 7 from Australia 7, 5 from Germany, 2 from five other countries (Argentina, Brazil, Ireland, Morocco and United States), 12 with one author and 5 with authors from an undefined country. In addition, searches in these databases for the Italian and German equivalents of the descriptors Territorial Intelligence and Territorial Economic Intelligence return no results. In the screening phase, where the selection has been made according to whether the papers belong to the intelligence discipline, the domain of articles from France is even more overwhelming, and the absence of other European countries except Spain is again observed.

Finally, an evaluation of the degree of interest of the 103 selected documents was made based on two criteria: first, their fit with the goal of the study (e.g., exclusion of the description and analysis of specific experiences or local cases, programs assessment’s…); and second, the quality, as Daudt et al. (2013) proposed, understood as the originality of their contributions. Two researchers independently extracted data from the first ten studies and met to confirm their approach to data extraction was consistent with the research question and purpose. In conclusion, 70 were excluded and, subsequently, 33 documents were included in the qualitative synthesis. Figure 1 shows the inclusion decision flowchart with the steps of the review decision process (identification, screening, eligibility and inclusion):

According to Levac et al. (2010), reviewers met at the beginning, midpoint and final stages of the review process to discuss any challenges or uncertainties related to the study selection. Consistent with Anderson et al. (2008) our research team was multidisciplinary and trained in different fields, so disagreements between reviewers A.G. and M.A.G were mediated by the third reviewer, M.A.E. For instance, MAG had discarded studies by Perogil (2017) and Flores et al. (2018) as they were specific to the field of tourism, but they were finally included as their conceptual reflections could be relevant for the purpose of our research.

Studies included in the synthesis were also added in a charting table (

Table 3. Charting table. Documents included in qualitative synthesis.

Title	First Author	Country of Edition	Year	Language	Type of Document
Entre information & Processus de communication: l’intelligence territoriale	Bertacchini, Yann	France	2004	French	scientific article
L’interaction acteur—système d’information au cœur de la dynamique d’un dispositif d’intelligence territoriale	Knauf, Audrey	France	2005	French	scientific article
Coopetition et intelligence économique.	Salvetat, David	France	2007	French	scientific article
Evolution of the concept of territorial intelligence within the coordination action of the European Network of Territorial Intelligence	Girardot, Jean-Jacques	France	2008	English	scientific article
Territorial Intelligence Communicational and Community System (TICCS)	Masselot, Cyril	France	2008	English	scientific article
L’intelligence territoriale entre communication et communauté stratégique de connaissance: l’exemple du dispositif régional de Poitou-Charentes	Moinet, Nicolas	France	2009	French	scientific article
L’intelligence territoriale. Entre structuration de réseau et dynamique de communication	Pelissier, Maud	France	2009	French	scientific article
Le débat public comme agir territorial: méthodes qualitatives	Angelini, Julien	France	2010	French	scientific article
Intelligence territoriale: une lecture retro-prospective	Bertacchini, Yann	France	2010	French	scientific article
Inteligencia Territorial y Transición Socio-Ecológica	Girardot, Jean-Jacques	Spain	2010	Spanish	scientific article
La gobernanza de los territorios ‘inteligentes’	Innerarity, Daniel	Spain	2010	Spanish	scientific article
Economic and territorial intelligence in the service of a strategy of regional development: The delicate question of the training of the actors	Mallowan, Monica	Canada	2010	French	scientific article
Observatoires numériques et pratiques citoyennes: des outils d’intelligence territoriale au service du développement durable	Piponnier, Anne	France	2010	French	scientific article
La création collective de la plateforme de services publics numériques de la rive droite de Bordeaux: entre communication territoriale et gestion publique locale	Le Corf, Jean-Baptiste	France	2011	French	scientific article
Territorial Intelligence as a Knowledge Creation Process: The Tunisian National Food Safety System Experience	Chouk, Souad Kamoun	Tunisia	2012	English	scientific article
Identité méditerranéenne: une question de chiffres et de sentiments	Dumas, Philippe	France	2012	French	scientific article
Inteligência Territorial E Desenvolvimento Sustentável: Exemplos Marroquinos E Brasileiros	Joyal, André	Brazil	2012	Portuguese	scientific article
Propuesta de un modelo de Inteligencia Territorial	Guzmán, Ana Rosa	Spain	2013	Spanish	scientific article
Territoire comme espace d’attractivité et de déclinaison de l’intelligence économique en intelligence territoriale.	Torra, Mohamed	France	2013	French	scientific article
L’intelligence économique territoriale: Utopie des territoires ou territoire des utopies ?	Coussi, Olivier	France	2014	French	scientific article
Collectivités territoriales et Développement Durable: contribution des technologies de l’information, et de la communication, à la dimension participative d’une politique publique: Lecture d’un projet cyber démocratique issu d’une démarche d’Intelligence Territoriale	Déprez, Paul	France	2014	French	doctoral theses
Du diagnostic à la prise en compte du territoire	Champollion, Pierre	France	2015	French	scientific article
The Territorial intelligence process: a humanistic path and a realistic mediation for development of hybrid territories	Bertacchini, Yann	France	2016	English	scientific article
Nuevas formas de transferir significado a lo rural desde la responsabilidad social y la inteligencia territorial. Delimitación del concepto de “smart ruralities”	Juanes, Francisco Javier	Spain	2016	Spanish	doctoral theses
Intelligence économique et Développement Durable des Territoires: de la compétitivité à la coopétitivité	Baaziz, Abdelkader	France	2017	French	scientific article
Km & économie de la connaissance: insuffler et cultiver L’art d’interpréter	Dupin, Corinne	France	2017	French	scientific article
Un modelo de gestión de la calidad para proyectos de inteligencia territorial (MGCPIT). Aplicación al caso de Buenavista de Apasco, Macuspana, Tabasco, México	Pérez, María Concepción	Spain	2017	Spanish	doctoral theses
Inteligencia territorial y turismo: la gestión pública de los Destinos Turísticos Inteligentes	Perogil, Javier	Spain	2017	Spanish	doctoral theses
¿Destinos turísticos inteligentes o territorios inteligentes? Estudios de casos en España	Flores, David	Spain	2018	Spanish	scientific article
L’intelligence des territoires: Note de lecture	Marchais-Roubelat, Anne	France	2018	French	scientific article
Inteligencia territorial: Conceptualización y avance en el estado de la cuestión. Vínculos posibles con los destinos turísticos	Perea-Medina, María Jesús	Spain	2018	Spanish	scientific article
Inteligencia competitiva y territorial en España. Una aproximación al modelo de las Agencias de Desarrollo Regional.	Muñoz-Cañavate, Antonio	Spain	2019	Spanish	scientific article
Comment appréhender les nouvelles formes d’organisation du travail au service de l’innovation collaborative dans le cadre des territoires inscrits dans une démarche de stratégie intelligente ?—Cas des tiers—lieux collaboratifs	Sandulache, Cornelia Elena	France	2019	French	doctoral theses

) with all the relevant data to inform the scoping review objective and question; extraction fields agreed by the team of researchers were as follows: title, first author, country of edition, year, language, and type of document (scientific article or doctoral theses).

3. Presentation and Discussion of Results

The concept of IT was born in France in 1998 (Girardot 2010) and the main contributions to its development come from this country, as the documents included in qualitative synthesis show. French studies are 63.63% of the sample and the seven articles published in the first decade of the 21st century were edited in French journals. In the second decade (2010 to 2019), which contained 81.81% of the records, there was growth and diversification of papers in a sustained way throughout the ten years. France remains dominant with 14 studies (53.84% of the decade), but is closely followed by Spain with nine (34.61% of the second decade and 27.27% of the total), of which three are related to intelligence applied to tourism. Doctoral theses have been concentrated in the last six years: three are from Spain and two from France. There are also three scientific articles written in extra-European countries (Canada, Brazil and Tunisia), within the French cultural sphere. The absence of papers from the Anglo-Saxon world stands out, despite the fact that three articles were written in English to facilitate their dissemination.

These data allow us to know the origin and development of TI, but they should not be understood as bibliometric indicators, because this is not the object of a scoping review. As proposed by Levac et al. (2010) the goal of a scoping review is to apply meaning to the results. A classical technique in critical thinking, from Aristotle (Sloan 2010), has been used: Seven Key Questions (7Ws), also known as the “seven circumstances”. According to Sloan (2010), this is a framing technique recommended for problem solving in different discipline settings. From the seminal proposal of the communications theorist and president of the American Political Science Association, Harold D. Lasswell (1948), the “5 + 2” key questions technique is widely used to analyze the structure of an act of communication. Van Gundy (1988), author of the creativity training program for the American Management Association, suggests that the primary purpose of this problem-solving technique is to allow for the systematic gathering of problem-relevant data from a social phenomenon or in a collection of texts. It is used also as a guide to find and collect qualitative evidences about an event and organizing relevant knowledge in sustainable development projects (Brennan and Rondón-Sulbarán 2019). According to this technique, the analysis of a subject can only be considered complete when these questions are answered: what, where, why, when, who, how, and for what.

3.1. What: Information and Knowledge

Literature gathers an important consensus around the definition of TI proposed in 2004 by Bertacchini, as “an informational and anthropological process, regular and continuous, initiated by local actors physically present and/or distant who appropriate the resources of a space by mobilizing and then transforming the energy of the territorial system into project capacity”, a process that can be very useful for the treatment of territory management issues (Angelini 2010). TI is the innovative, mutualized and networked organization of all the information and knowledge useful for the development, competitiveness and attractiveness of a territory, collectively and for each of its players (Knauf 2005). The hybrid concept of Territorial Economic Intelligence has been defined as “the capacity of a territory to anticipate socio-economic changes and manage the knowledge that results from them” (Marchais-Roubelat 2018).

The knowledge of a territory is something more than the mere accumulation of existing knowledge, in the same way that an intelligent organization is due to the synergy that occurs in its systems of rules, institutions and procedures, and not by the mere addition of intelligences. The generation of knowledge is the consequence of communicative acts or, in other words, a relational asset (Innerarity 2010). Creative knowledge, innovation, takes place in contexts characterized by strong heterogeneity. The knowledge of smart territories is characterized by its hybridization, diversity and contrast (Innerarity 2010). Partnership, which represents the instrument of global approach, goes against the competition principles as long as it is based on cooperation. Networks allow private actors to not only take part in the decision-making process in the framework of participative democracy, but also to provide common goods and services (Girardot 2008). This raises difficulties of application in practice, since the classic approaches of Economic Intelligence and the coopetition are, if not opposed, at least not very compatible (Salvetat and Le Roy 2007).

The theoretical foundations of the concept of TI are as follows: the importance of the territories as spaces for action for their community; sustainable development as an alternative to a purely economic vision of development; and information and communication sciences and technologies, such as Economic Intelligence, as vectors of development and as tools for building collective intelligence (Girardot 2010). TI constitutes the essential framework for tackling the different territorial issues linked to the production, protection and exchange of knowledge and know-how between the different actors (Torra 2013). From an instrumental point of view, it tends to use its capacities to share information and promote cooperation within ethical limits of sustainable development. The ethics that TI claims are not simply respect for the law, but respect for the ethical principles of sustainable development, particularly partnership and participation (Girardot 2010).

3.2. Where: The Territory

Different “dimension” cross the complex notion of territory used by the educational human and social sciences (Champollion and Floro 2015), and, particularly, the analysed manuscripts: the “spatial” dimension, the first dimension highlighted by geographers in the middle of the 20th century, even if spatial density is not equivalent to social density (Innerarity 2010); the “sociological” dimension, identified and analysed a little later from the 1960s; the “political” and “institutional” dimension linked to territorialised educational policies (such as “priority education” or the rural school); the “economic” dimension, which integrates the constituent elements of the territorial fabric including, of course, the incentives and fundings from the national State and the territorial communities concerned, as well as the European structural funds intended to combat regional imbalances; and the “symbolic” or “dreamed” dimension, identified in the 1990s, which is essentially based on the “social representations” of the territory concerned and generally refers to the notion of “territoriality”. The economic attractiveness of a territory reflects its ability to attract external resources, both productive and residential, that strengthen and boost local economies. The different instruments offered by territorial marketing can benefit this type of dynamics (Juanes 2016).

The proximity effect (cognitive, institutional, organizational) that characterizes the territory helps to create trust and contributes to the visibility of problems, initiatives and promoters (Pelissier and Pybourdin 2009). However, one of the constants of the territory is the physical proximity that nature imposes, and that men transform into knowledge, trust and relationships, constitutive of social capital, or even into challenges, competition and hostility in zero-sum or even globally negative games (Dumas 2012).

3.3. Why: The Sustainability

Literature distinguishes between two types of territorial development: endogenous development in which sustainable development has its place and which must first be privileged, and exogenous development which will call on skills often external to the territory and often external international actors (for example setting up new businesses, etc.) (Baaziz et al. 2017). Territorial development implies that a territorial management of knowledge is carried out, articulating networks that promote innovation and entrepreneurship around the industrial and commercial possibilities and potentials of the territory (Guzmán 2013). However, TI is not a simple variant of the Economic Intelligence, it is more ambitious (Girardot 2008).

TI is based on a scientific approach that explicitly refers to sustainable development, while Economic Intelligence advocates economic development with competition as the main vehicle (Girardot 2010). Effectively, Territorial Intelligence includes in its approach to territorial development, in addition to economic growth, the social and environmental dimensions of the modern concept of sustainability, considering the territory as a system of mutualization, cooperation and partnership (Girardot 2010). With regard to this multidimensional definition of the territory, the notion of sustainable development of territories necessarily implies possible interactions between sustainable development and the identity, material and organizational dimensions of territories. This requires reading grids at the same time, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary (Baaziz et al. 2017).

TI is more than the territorialization of economic intelligence, which would be the simple decline at the level of the territorial divisions of the national Economic Intelligence policy (Mallowan and Marcon 2010). Pelissier and Pybourdin (2009) insist that the success of a territory does not depend so much on its capacity of attraction and its economic development but on its capacity to develop diversified projects and to constitute a formal capital by associating the actors of the territory according to a logic of partnership where the Intelligence is a mediation tool that promotes cooperation, networking and sharing of information.

The debate on sustainability requires an understanding of the interaction between multiple social actors and the decision-making process, defined in literature as governance. Following this idea, the established objectives must include a wide variety of parameters: social, political and cultural (Joyal and Macedo 2012). The current challenges of sustainable development are related to the increase in the rate of universalization, demographic evolution, social and regional cohesion, the growing importance of regional identities, migratory movements, climate change, large-scale urbanization, etc. (Girardot 2010). The creation of regional ecosystems favoring innovation and taking sustainable development into account in economic development is a fundamental challenge for the years to come.

3.4. When: The Time of the Governance

The territory is not a space for the application of decentralized Economic Intelligence policy, but a place of emergence of a new conception of local governance in the framework of sustainable development (Dumas 2012). The approach to TI adopts a systemic vision of the territory and considers the complexity of the social construct engaged by its actors. The territory is symbolic and inscribed as a representation in the collective memory of its actors. The implementation of TI cannot be the unilateral work of a category of actor. It emerges from the desire to participate in the development of the territorial project. It represents a common and complex form of thought rather than a deliberative decision. The territory is a project, uncertain, indeterminate, and in perpetual construction (Angelini 2010).

The reference to the territorial community and the local dimension often creates a confusion between “Territorial Intelligence” and “community development”. Firstly, community development often preserves the economic development of the territories, rather than the sustainable development, as its primary objective. Secondly, in community development approaches, the consideration of territory is often reduced to the local dimension and does not include a systematic analysis of the geographic space or spatial dynamics. And thirdly, community development is oriented towards a sociological approach to territorial communities rather than towards a territorial approach, often adopting a suspicious attitude against technologies for the benefit of other participatory methods of animation (Girardot 2010).

Two modes of governance of the TI seem to conflict as they should converge. On the one hand, a top-down approach emanating from the State, with a view to controlling and observing the territories in order to employ them in a more relevant way with a view to improving national competitiveness, and on the other hand, a bottom-up approach emanating from the territories themselves to develop a Territorial Intelligence system that is most suited to their own specificities. Rather than opposing these two conceptions of the TI, it would be better to combine them because they complement each other: consistency on the national territory of the public Economic Intelligence system is necessary, but the State cannot request the same management method without taking the specificities of the territories into account, as they are by nature different spaces (Coussi et al. 2014).

TI is at the heart of a “top–bottom” dialectic between representative and participatory democracy, as shown in Figure 2 (Dumas 2012). It seems imperative to bring the top-down and bottom-up approaches to meet (Coussi et al. 2014).

This conception of TI is very close to the recently notion of territorial governance that has emerged onto the European policy agenda since the early 1990’s, and is often used in relation to the implementation of a regional policy aimed at strengthening territorial cohesion and reaching a more competitive and sustainable Europe of diverse regions, with the goal of a polycentric territorial development of the European Union. The territorial governance should be understood as a process of cooperation devoted to achieve territorial cohesion through an intensive and continuous dialogue between all stakeholders of territorial development (European Union 2007). The principal message of the European strategic policy from a decade ago, according the Territorial Agenda agreed in 2011, is that “territory matters”, in other words, “the spatial dimension should be taken seriously in the formulation of policy in order to maximise synergies, capitalise on development opportunities, and avoid contradictory policy impacts” (Walsh 2012). This official high-level recognition of the importance of territory has been a factor for promoting TI and shifting the focus of Intelligence from the nation to the region, from the economy to sustainable development and from the top-down governance to the territorial governance founded in the participation and cooperation of all stakeholders.

3.5. Who: The Actors

Talking about a cooperative innovation ecosystem necessarily involves defining the roles and describing the relationships of solidarity between the different stakeholders involved in this ecosystem: political decision-makers, who set the framework and rules for sustainable development and the conditions on which sustainable innovation can be developed; sponsors of sustainable innovation (embodied by economic companies), who support research and development activity; producers of sustainable innovation (embodied by universities and their innovation-producing incubators as well as by civil society through Associations, or personal initiatives, or companies through public-private partnerships), who invent, build, sell or integrate research and development activities; and end users (embodied by the civil society), who express their cultural, civic and societal values as well as their needs and concerns (Baaziz et al. 2017).

Each of the stages of Territorial Intelligence involves the participation of this wide variety of actors. It is possible to group these actors in “territorial knowledge networks”, which together integrate and stimulate the regional innovation system. These networks are made up of territorial actors and their intra and extra territorial connections, and are as follows (Guzmán 2013): intelligence services network: consultants, advisers, surveillance and intelligence professionals, managers and promoters of knowledge, sources and repositories of information and knowledge; solution development network: administrators of technological projects, universities and R&D centres; value production and delivery networks: clusters and networks of territorial value, technological manager; and Integration network: institutional and organizational representation.

Actors write themselves the indicators which allow them to pilot the territorial intervention, the actions to be set up, to repeat, or to be requalified. Experts have a role of scientific accompaniment (being experimented by definition), but also of transfer, thus formation. They are not traditionally external in the approach any more, but really involved in the different moments of the observation (Masselot 2008).

Each user, actor in the system, has an individual and collective role to play. The interactions between each of them define with precision the grouping entity, a set of management rules that govern interactions between users and between modules (which make up the information system). These dynamic rules can be inserted for each built-in function, allowing for the finest adaptation in the workspace (Knauf 2005). The observation of the practice of local actors, as anthropological information process, involves the combination of three assumptions (Bertacchini 2016): the actors exchange information (energy generation individually and/or collectively); they give credit to the information received (capture-information exchange); the communication process engaged and established actors establish appropriate networks and transfer skills (mobilization and transfer of energy: the formulation of the project).

TI really exists when there is a cross fertilization of skills and strategic investments between actors. It cannot be imposed, it should be the result of a common will. Only a multidisciplinary approach backed by the ways of thinking and the multiple skills of each, a networking of actors, the pooling and collection of data relating to the environment, the confrontation of the points of view of local actors, the impulse and the creation of knowledge on the territory, makes it possible to give meaning to the facts and, above all, to develop a cooperative local governance based on a shared territorial diagnosis. Finally, it is worth remembering that the territory does not think in the place of the actors, but that it is the actors who think of it (Champollion and Floro 2015). It is enough that one of the actors does not play or plays a counterproductive game so that the Territorial Intelligence developed around a relevant project is reduced considerably (Moinet 2009). Proximity allows the sharing of tacit, non-formalized and unofficial knowledge, as evidenced by numerous works on clusters. It must be borne in mind that one of the essential aspects of this learning is trust between the players, which in particular allows the information to be validated without having to previously validate the informants. This construction of trust depends on a feeling of belonging or territorial appropriation that participates in a phenomenon of symbolic representation (Pelissier and Pybourdin 2009).

3.6. For What: The Objectives

Territory planning; sustainable tourism; cultural development; competitiveness clusters; the school and university card; territorial networks; the distribution of tasks and roles between region, department, country, municipalities, agglomerations and cities; the implementation of participatory democracy; setting up coherent and adaptive statistical systems; socio-economic, benchmarking, local and regional strategies observatories, etc. are examples of fields of action of TI (Dumas 2012).

TI has also answers for relevant questions. How can Europe make the socio-ecological transition? What are the structural changes and policies that will improve economic growth and the well-being of all in the face of the challenges posed by the environmental and financial legacy of the crisis? And, above all, what changes must be promoted in public support, in cultural and educational fields and in the territories? Girardot (2010) answered all these questions by hypothesizing that a new development model, aimed at guaranteeing a minimum level of well-being for all and improving the well-being of each would be able to guarantee this success, if it was based on cooperation and observation of the territories and on knowledge co-constructed in the territories, if it obeyed a plural design of innovation and if it was energized by truly participatory territorial governance. It must also keep in mind that the objectives to be pursued simultaneously by public management are to build policies, know-how and innovations that will ultimately make the territory concerned a centre of skills or a key element in the competitiveness of the companies that set up there (Coussi et al. 2014).

The application of the principles and tools of TI to the tourist field generates a new discipline called “Tourist Intelligence”, which offers a sustainable tourism system, which does not harm the environment that configures the destination, but makes it a participant in its own development. Spanish Literature has focused on it during the last five years (Perogil 2017; Flores et al. 2018; Perea-Medina et al. 2018; Muñoz-Cañavate and Herrera-Barragán 2019). Tourist Intelligence goes beyond the simple development of new information technologies, since it implies a change in the following aspects (Flores et al. 2018): territory management, carried out by all the agents operating in it; agreed tourism policies; use of technologies; total innovation, which not only includes the development of new technologies, but is also established in management, governance, the development of new products, the provision of services, etc.; and total sustainability.

3.7. How: The Methods

The primary mission of the Territorial Intelligence process must be the detection of local skills and the organization of their transfer through the appropriate information circuits. The second implication underlines a major transition in the attitude of these same actors and proposes to make them exchange, mobilize and come together around the territorial project. This implication refers to the notion of commitment which means recognizing oneself in an identity, that is to say also recognizing oneself in the code or value of the local actors with whom you exchange information (Bertacchini 2004). This approach includes cultivating the art of identifying and capitalizing on the only information and knowledge likely to be re-exploited, the ability to grasp complexity, the ability to create the conditions for collective creation of meaning and to promote emergence of new ideas (Dupin 2017).

The stated objective is to mobilize the various actors in the territory, well identified and considered to be strategic, in a process of “participatory design” so that they themselves produce knowledge of general interest. The key success factor is in the way (the proccess) of creating and designing proposals through this specific form of procedural democracy. Various mediations involve intermediary actors, “training consultants”, who would be the guarantors of a mission of education of the general interest and of a dynamic of “territorial intelligence”, characterized by the mutualisation and the capitalization of information within the territory (Le Corf 2011). The recompositing of the traditional division of labour between researchers and actors, the reduction of the functional separation between production and dissemination of knowledge, the development of new forms of organizational communication in situ, the development of greater consistency between diagnosis and action, potentially generated by the Territorial Intelligence approach, is already observed in practical experiences in France. The same applies to the cooperative and participatory aspect included in the territorial observation process (Piponnier et al. 2010).

The TI designs and realizes tools for, with and by the territorial actors that aim to develop their territories in the respect of the principles of sustainable development and democratic governance (Girardot 2008). Thinking about using global systems allowing both brainstorming and foresight constitutes the heart of methods which bring definite added value to decision-makers. They make it possible to integrate various points of view and they are adaptable to all the parties concerned. They are therefore a support for consultation, but they also provide tangible avenues after this. In this sense, they participate fully in territorial development (Baaziz et al. 2017).

This method is aligned with the proposal of the Territorial Agenda of the European Union in 2007 to promote regional clusters of competition and innovation where the business community, the scientific community and administrations work together in order to connect the knowledge and the skills of diverse agents of the territory. TI success depends on its ability to promote the territorial capital: the system of territorial assets of economic, cultural, social and environmental nature that ensures the development potential of places (Perucca 2014).

More and more eco-socio-citizen practices of territorial actors promote the collective appropriation of digital instruments for territorial diagnosis and contextual understanding (Champollion and Floro 2015). It is necessary to build a real network strategy consisting of building and animating a virtual community around a shared interest; pooling information (information watch) from the animation of this network of territorial actors; and boosting this information capital through, in particular, the identification of its agents-facilitators (sounding board on the web), the exploitation of all the communication resources of ICT and the permanent animation of the instances of local democracy, whether electronic or present on the physical territory (Déprez 2014). Indeed, new information and communication technologies have enabled considerable reductions in transaction costs and have therefore facilitated the emergence of new socio-economic models of horizontal (or even oblique) collaboration. This new facility to share and manage resources transparently and democratically, without the need to hold them, escapes market laws or the property rights of a traditional organization (Sandulache 2019).

The use of a certain number of digital tools for territorial observation must gradually allow actors, accompanied by researchers, to familiarize and make their own the techniques of sociological investigation, procedures for encoding data collected, and finally, modes of use of data processing software providing flat sorting or balance sheets, simple or multiple cross-sorting, factorial analyses of correspondences and ascending hierarchical classifications. In summary, quantitative and qualitative methods of interpretation of statistically observed phenomena. This joint observation work between actors and researchers also potentially provides an opportunity for researchers to build questions better suited to the areas of investigation and the knowledge needs of the actors and, above all, by confronting their research hypotheses, then their initial interpretations, to the local realities expressed by the actors, to co-construct with them a shared vision of the territory, finer and closer to said realities, far from any artefact (Champollion and Floro 2015).

The culture of territoriality requires a collective learning process (Chouk 2012). It is therefore a question of creating a learning environment conducive to territorial development by the dissemination of multiple knowledge. Therein lies the capacity or the incapacity of the territory to obtain results (Bertacchini 2004). The TI model proposed by Guzmán (2013) recognizes two large groups of processes: (a) knowledge production and productivity processes; and (b) territorial learning processes. The first ones focus on the collection and transformation of knowledge in innovations and the latter works in the shaping of the environment and the knowledge ecosystem and in the expansion of territorial possibilities for innovation.

A concrete way of implementing TI in practice is the Regional Innovation Systems that involves the interaction of the different agents that are within a territory, from companies to universities, through the organizations created to support economic development, and that ends in a form of collective intelligence as a consequence of the creation of these contact networks. Among the organizations that are part of the Regional Innovation System, the Regional Development Agencies (ADR) have among their objectives the promotion of activities related to the promotion of the economic development of a territory, through the support of companies that become facilitators and enhancers of the wealth of the territory (Muñoz-Cañavate and Herrera-Barragán 2019). The use of quality management tools commonly used in the field of business management can enhance the application of the principles of Territorial Intelligence (multidimensionality, partnership and participation) within socio-territorial projects, improving knowledge management by of the actors as well as their participation in the process (Pérez 2017).

Developing training in TI is difficult and necessary. There are obvious dysfunctions in some experiences which show that it seems necessary to introduce change in the network of actors through the learning of new forms of collective action to discover and acquire new cooperation processes and develop new methods or systems of action or regulation (Coussi et al. 2014). The essential knowledge and know-how for the exercise of a Territorial Intelligence mission should be based on the following axes: surveillance, diagnosis, coordination of the public action, partnerships, networks, knowledge and innovation, influence and preservation (Mallowan and Marcon 2010). The dynamics of TI is implemented by force of energy, constancy, animation and deployment of devices that generate learning skills and, always upstream, relational learning that we neglect too frequently (Moinet 2009). Cooperation between heterogeneous actors becomes a privileged modality of interaction in a dynamic of collective learning and allows mutualisation or even the development of previously diffuse knowledge (Pelissier and Pybourdin 2009).

4. Conclusions

The methodological process followed in this study has been proven to be valid to identify the evidence and understand the significance of Territorial Intelligence in the academic literature of the last two decades, and to detect the evolution of the concept with the introduction of new elements. The results show a consensus in a broad conceptualization of TI as a practice devoted to obtaining, analysing and valuing information and knowledge about a territory and their environment in order to design and implement collective territorial plans on matters considered strategic. TI began in France as an application of Economic Intelligence to regional or departmental spaces, but progressively it is being considered as an autonomous sub-discipline within the field of Intelligence Studies. In the last decade there has also been an expansion of IT to other countries, especially Spain, Canada, Brazil and the Maghreb, and a gradual tilting towards very specific applications, such as Tourist Intelligence.

The consolidation process of IT has been accompanied by the enrichment of the concept with three differential elements. First, the consideration of IT as a collective process that requires the participation of multiple political, economic and social agents active in the territory in the tasks of collecting and interpreting information and projecting proposals for action. Second, the integration of information obtained from external sources with the own knowledge that the agents of a territory have about it. Third, to shift the focus of competition between territories or between clusters or groups with diverse interests within a territory towards intra and inter-territorial collaboration to promote sustainable development with a global vision. These characteristics mark a clear distinction with Economic Intelligence, considered as a reserved subject with a high degree of protection of knowledge, conducted by centralized departments located at the highest levels of the State or the big transnational corporations, and more focused on ensuring that a country and its companies achieve a competitive advantage in the international economic board.

The goal of scoping reviews is to offer a preliminary map of the evidence of a subject and to provide breath rather than depth of information in a particular topic (Tricco et al. 2016b), therefore it cannot be regarded as a final output (Grant and Booth 2009). Our review has also reduced the research to four European languages to focus on the main language of scientific communication (English), the country in which IT was born (France), and the Mediterranean and Latin American regions because they have received a greater influence from the French concept of Economic Intelligence than the Anglo-Saxon Competitive Intelligence. Therefore, more local contributions written in other languages or from other cultures have not been collected. The above limitations are compensated by providing a rapid overview of the state of a discipline when it is incipient, such as TI, identifying gaps in knowledge that encourage new research, and delimiting new fields to conduct systematic reviews or bibliometric studies that will incorporate quantitative techniques.

The findings of this review of TI allow us to suggest the need for future research dedicated to the delimitation of their relationships with other sub-disciplines of Intelligence Studies, the implementation of techniques of Big Data that help to create collective intelligence and the proposal of universal guidelines to design, implement and evaluate the results of local and regional Territorial Intelligence programs. The dimension of Intelligence as a political practice also requires studying the presence of TI in gray literature: professional conference proceedings, technical reports, territorial arrangement projects, government plans and programs. The successive crises of different nature and origin the territories have faced for more than ten years, since 2008, and that foreseeably will worsen with the effects of the pandemic of COVID-19 require new and vigorous tools to find solutions. TI will help the territories to deal with the important challenges they will find in the immediate future.