Most of the companies and organizations are identifiable unambiguously by means of their IP-address. Competitors can make use of that.

• Investigations using the Internet do not remain confidentially
  Your investigations on web sites which are directly or indirectly controlled by your competitors (e.g. due to a service contract) do not remain confidentially. Thus, searching the Internet it can happen that you give away business secrets unnoticed, for instance while you are looking for patents or making a market analysis.
  
• Web sites of your competitors "are playing around" with you
  Employees of competitors are able to observe your IP-address while you are visiting the web sites of them. Because of that they may present wrong or no information at all to you. They are even able to show a special career-page in order to headhunt your employees. You might also get an advertisement call or advertisement e-mails.
• Spies in the industry may redirect the data traffic of your company to their own servers
  Technically experienced spies are perhaps able to redirect your whole network traffic from your provider to their own servers. As a result your whole Internet communication would be uncovered. That is how all unencrypted messages and all Internet services, which were contacted by your company, would be known by your competitors.