BIA’s Learning & Development Solutions are designed to educate and train clients to evaluate Quality of Information as defined by transparency, completeness, and reliability of information across a variety of disclosure types and settings. Offered both live and through distance learning and delivered by leading experts from the national intelligence community, BIA’s courses are customizable to meet the needs of specific clients and employee groups.

All of BIA’s Learning & Development Solutions originate from the principle that effective information collection and evaluation must be non-confrontational, undetectable to the interviewee and appropriate in all professional settings. The training draws upon the techniques and experience of the intelligence community's leading interviewing and interrogation experts. BIA’s core-training in Strategic Information Collection is a course designed for clients that seek more information, of higher quality and reliability, to inform their decision-making and risk management processes. As with all of BIA’s training, Strategic Information Collection uses relevant case studies from our clients’ disciplines and is highly interactive and engaging. Participants walk away with practical and highly actionable Behavioral Intelligence skills.

From the core Strategic Information Collection offering, BIA clients are able to enhance and expand their Behavioral Intelligence skills with advanced, dynamic training modules. BIA’s e-Learning Portal provides on-demand reinforcement for skills gained during in-person training sessions.

Strategic Information Collection

This module introduces the Tactical Behavioral Assessment® (TBA) model, a simple and highly effective framework to recognize and assess the verbal and non-verbal behavioral indicators to determine when an individual is being less than candid or lacks confidence. Building from this framework, BIA then focuses on the most effective ways to develop questions — an interview strategy that greatly increases one’s ability to obtain information and evoke behaviors that signal the candor of an individual’s response.

The following descriptions are some of BIA’s advanced Learning & Development Solutions program offerings. Additional modules are available. For further information, please contact us.

Information Elicitation: The Psychology of Disclosure

This module is designed to teach participants a proven framework to elicit relevant and reliable information while at the same time preserve crucial relationships. We provide the keys to obtaining information from reluctant or difficult interviewees. These techniques are entirely non-confrontational and are appropriate for use in all public and private professional environments.

COMPASS™: Comprehensive Analysis of Source Statements

BIA’s COMPASS™ strategy is a systematic process for evaluating prepared oral or written statements in order to extract the “unintended message” from the “intended message” of crafted communications. The session provides a framework for going beyond typical analysis to determine if there are unanswered questions and to develop a hypothesis for future inquiry.

Testing the Hypothesis

This module teaches participants a reliable framework to test the hypotheses critical to an investment decision. BIA’s structured approach builds conviction through a series of questions designed to explore the fundamental hypothesis, as well as test the potential of alternative hypotheses. Participants apply the approach to a real-world situation of their choosing over the course of the program, finishing the session with a detailed question strategy ready for implementation.

Recognizing and Using Protest Statements to Your Advantage

Recognizing that all management teams are expected to present their firms in a positive light, this module is designed to increase the analyst’s confidence around management’s motivation and potential underlying concerns by deconstructing and capitalizing on their use of protest statements.

Red Envelope Group Exercise

A team-based real time exercise in which participants use BIA’s deception detection and interviewing skills to solve an actual crime. This highly innovative and interesting exercise begins with a brief review of the fundamental Tactical Behavior Assessment and Strategic Interviewing principles and proceeds through the development of an interview strategy and question formulation to the actual interview of suspects.

Effective Interviewing in International Settings

Individual and small group sessions designed to help develop effective questioning strategies and carry out successful interviews with foreign management teams. Led by experts with years of experience conducting interviews overseas, in both foreign languages and through interpreters, these sessions will maximize your effectiveness when interviewing foreign-based companies.

The Art of Interviewing: Advanced Question Formulation

This module focuses on asking more powerful questions by exploring the concept of issue identification and prioritization prior to question formulation. Various question types are explored and learning is reinforced through multiple practical exercises.

Advanced Interviewing: One-on-One Coaching

Individual coaching sessions in which individuals use a case study to develop an interviewing strategy and then role play a management interview. Participants are video-taped in the role of both interviewer and interviewee and a video review is used to provide specific and immediate feedback.

In today’s crowded research marketplace, Business Intelligence Advisors has created–and occupies alone–a ground-breaking category of investment research called Behavioral Intelligence Research. BIA’s Behavioral Intelligence Research systematically measures and analyzes the Quality of Information in all forms of corporate disclosure to help clients guard against bias, identify hidden risks, build conviction and identify uncorrelated alpha-generating investment insights.

BIA’s Behavioral Intelligence Research is grounded in the Company’s proprietary Tactical Behavior Assessment® (TBA) model, conceived by the national intelligence community and refined since 2001 while serving the world’s premier investment firms. BIA applies its unique behavioral lens using Tactical Behavior Assessment to evaluate the completeness and reliability of all forms of corporate disclosure. The Tactical Behavior Assessment model relies on patterns of certain verbal and non-verbal behaviors which are consistent and reliable indicators of hidden risk.

BIA offers its Behavioral Intelligence Research through an entirely bespoke model, analyzing a wide range of disclosures including: earnings calls, press releases, broadcast interviews, and other management commentary, from companies selected by our clients.

BIA delivers its research via the BIA Research Center, a secure, interactive web-based portal. In addition to providing access to BIA’s research in traditional .pdf format, the BIA Research Center allows clients to access a revolutionary visual mapping of BIA’s behavioral analysis of corporate disclosures. A BIA Behavior Assessment Map provides a behavioral concern rating and analysis for each event as well as a concern rating/analysis for every discrete question and answer exchange – all organized by key business topic covered during the call. Additionally, the interactive Map format enables clients to compare behavioral concerns by business topic over time as well as among a selected group of peer companies.

As the leader in behavioral analysis, BIA’s clients also have access to the Behavioral Intelligence Journal, BIA’s thought leadership publication, which provides periodic industry and thematic research highlighting developments in and applications of BIA’s intelligence methodologies.

Through BIA’s Expert Advisory offering, clients have access to BIA’s team of Behavioral Intelligence experts. This team of in-house experts, which averages 20 years of experience in the national intelligence community, assists clients with real-time interview preparation, based on BIA’s Tactical Behavior Assessment® (TBA) model. Each client meeting with a BIA expert is highly customized and based on individual client need and investment approach.

BIA offers its unique Investment Intelligence services to clients seeking source-driven information to fill critical intelligence gaps in their investment thesis or due diligence process. With a strict compliance framework and sensitivity to confidentiality matters, BIA marries deep-rooted intelligence expertise with practical application of its proprietary target analysis, source identification and broad commercial due diligence experience to collect timely and actionable intelligence to augment a client’s investment, due diligence, or risk management process. The information gathering process is further enhanced and differentiated by BIA’s expertise in Tactical Behavior Assessment (TBA).

BIA’s Investment Intelligence solutions include management diligence, company/issue diligence and geopolitical/policy intelligence. Investment Intelligence projects are always proprietary and customized to meet the client’s unique information needs. While no two projects are alike, the scope of Investment Intelligence projects to date have covered all sectors of the economy and addressed a broad range of issues and topics in approximately 20 countries. Each project is staffed with a dedicated project manager and team of experienced intelligence collection professionals.