aUTHORED BY tOM gROOMS
“In Concert with Information Gluttony - Third
Feature"
Lastly, we have reached the third perplexity of
modern times which is the most robust to digest - an information gluttony - but
in a way the most appetizing. We are
living in an era of unprecedented access to information that is continuing to
compound every nine months and whose acceleration may even hasten. There will be some who need an information
diet from gluttony while a few having anorexia will need to pay more
attention. Where is the balance, the yin
and yang, the sanity, the balance with nature and the world - where lies the
necessity?
Today, global telecommunications networks move
raw data and information around the world literally at the speed of light and
will in the near future move faster than the speed of light. And as the capacity for communication and the
capacity to move information faster expand, the volume of available information
keeps developing to fill this void. It
may be self-fulfilling with more data banks and telecommunications modes in
operation, and more coming on-line every week, we may be reaching the point
where the total of human knowledge of nearly every subject now is available to
anyone with a computer and telecommunications link.
In short, raw information from around the world
is proliferating into government and business, rather like the pouring of water
into a colander. It comes in by
computer, telephone, fax, from conversations of personnel, and guests who visit
from everywhere. It comes through the
floor, through the windows, under the desks, over the air waves. It never stops coming. We are immersed in information twenty-four
hours a day - animate and inanimate, intrinsic and extrinsic, tangible and
intangible - no matter what.
Once identified, raw information takes on a
life of its own. Information has no
respect for lines of authority. Any
piece of information that reaches any part of any organization tends to move
through that organization, like water seeking its own level; block it here and
it moves there, always flowing and never being fully contained. The result is that today's high-tech
equipped, senior government and business executives have - quite literally at
their finger tips - volumes of raw information that previously would have never
reached the intended audience and organization in the first place. Otherwise, raw information would remain at
missed audiences and organizations, or lower levels whether it be satellite
photographs of troop movements, shift of key personnel to a new appointment,
the latest scoop on an acquisition or merger, or price fluctuation of this or
that stock halfway around the world.
Today's senior government and business
executives are drowning in a sea of raw information. To their astonishment and growing distress,
they are discovering that the only thing as difficult as managing an
organization with too little information is managing an organization with too
much information. In this fast-paced,
information-driven, global environment, to manage successfully a chief
executive needs a mechanism - a powerful market intelligence management tool -
which can be relied on to do four things.
First, classify the relevant
from the irrelevant information. Second,
monitor the relevant information as
expeditiously as possible. Third, filter this information for the sole
purpose of enhancing the chief executive or senior executive unique
decision-making needs. And fourth, report the final intelligence product -
the conclusions, judgments, projections - available in a timely manner to the
chief executive or key policy-making executive when they need it in a usable
form that they can readily absorb. This
is only a part of what is offered by a market intelligence system design.
In our continuing story, let us next consider
how each of these four steps in turn really work in a
market intelligence unit or system. As
the world is moving through gluttony of change with you or without you - you
will be in concert or out of tune.
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information does not purport to be complete; therefore, consult with expert
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maxim "caveat emptor" applies.