I believe that information can be used to dramatically transform the world we live in today. Information can be created from systems that generate data. We can collect data about business, political, social, natural and other systems. Business leaders, politicians, environmentalists, scientists etc. try to glean information about the systems they work with so they can make intelligent decisions.
The vast majority of organizations and business today do not create good information and hence make suboptimal decisions. Information is almost solely used to support tactical decision making. How many companies would dramatically change their core profit generating operational processes based on data analysis on a regular basis? How often do governments make radical policy changes to our fundamental social programs based on data analysis? I have never in my lifetime witnessed evolutionary change to the fundamental systems that impact our lives. Decision makers are risk averse and resistant to change. The fundamental systems which impact our world have massive inertia and might change a few times in a human lifespan.
I believe the missing link to aid in decision making is a feedback loop which would allow organizations to create decision making intelligence, that is to understand which decisions work best under different system conditions or states. We need to capture every decision that is made in every organization and the information that was available at the instant the decision was made. A new class of operational systems developed on top of todays transaction processing systems will permit us to capture the human and organizational intelligence displayed by our best decision makers and committees to create knowledge.
I am not aware of a single business or organization that has evolved beyond using transaction processing and data collection. If our decision makers had access to every decision made in their organization, if they understood what the decision outcome was and had statistical analysis of the likelihood of success for all known decisions under all known system states would they not be far less risk averse? Would humanity progress faster if we were willing to make dramatic changes to our world with higher confidence?
I believe that every business can increase their bottom-line profits by 100+% within 12 months if they created good information out of their data today. I believe governments could deliver social, economic and environmental programs with a significantly smaller tax base if they created good information out of their data today. I believe we could have significant impact on our natural world if we created good infomation out of the data we collect today. This is the promise of the Information Age. We are today at the earliest stages of this evolution. If every organization and business maximized the value of their data today, poverty would decline, production would increase, decision making knowledge could cross generational boundaries, life would radically change.
Evidence of the Power of Information is growing. Regulatory changes like Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley are proof that excellent information is not a nice to have it is a must have. Academics publishing books like Freakonomics and Super Crunchers present numerous examples of how intelligence can be created from the data our systems generate.
I hope with this blog to put forth my ideas related to this premise. I hope to discuss and debate these ideas with interested parties and in doing so advance my understanding about this topic and hopefully influence others to promote this evolutionary view of the Power of Information.
