Indeed yes – it is a business threat.
Digital world helps in quick spread of business idea across globe unlike in past where it used to take good amount of time to percolate the idea. This feature enables the competitors to make the relevant changes in the product/ service offerings, marketing plans and delivery time lines there by removing surprise before launch.
This is one of the reasons, some leading companies keep their business plan and business strategies under wrap up to the last minute there by maintaining the surprise to customer until launch of product or service.
To maintain such surprise, all the stake holders are generally bound by NDA- Non Disclosure Agreements … be it employees, External Consultants , members of supply chain ..
Question is do you have such practice in your organization?