The aim of this research is to analyze competitive intelligence (CI) activities in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) from the industrial sector in Spain. Specifically, an attempt is made to identify why these companies carry out CI activities, the types of activity they carry out, and the influence that a company's features and the environment in which it operates have on developing CI activities. An ad hoc questionnaire was put together comprising 124 items distributed among a sample of 425 SMEs from the industrial sector. The results show that a company's features and environment have a significant influence on the CI activities developed by them.