|
Blog: Dan PowerApril 5, 2008HBR Breakthrough Ideas for 2008Harvard Business Review has an annual survey of ideas and trends that "will make an impact on business". The 2008 article identifies 20 transformations. I'll identify eight that are particularly relevant to decision support. Jerome Groopman, MD discusses errors of judgment and how physicians are beginning to acknowledge their fallibility "in an effort to teach others and to improve themselves." CEOs should have formal decision-making reviews for self-analysis. Do you think this will happen? Michael Sheehan suggests managers need to deal more effectively with opposition to strategic ideas. He notes "for a variety of reasons, businesses face better organized and more vocal opponents than ever before." The approaches for dealing with community-based opposition are not tied to tradional business intelligence, but good customer relationship decision support could help. John Medina suggests "imagine a brain-friendly workplace where board meetings are conducted on treadmills, desks are equipped with stationary bicycles, and people wear gym clothes, not suits." Supposedly we "learn 20% faster immediately after exercise than after sitting still." So exercise while you use your BI tools. Jane McGonigal writes "In the coming decade, many businesses will achieve their greatest breakthroughs by playing games - specifically, alternate reality games, or ARGs." "ARGs will provide a truly stimulating framework for doing everyday work." Supposedly alternate reality games help users develop 10 collective-intelligence competencies, like "influency", "emergensight" and "mobbability". Well the skill names seem strange, but I will investigate and blog about the competencies/skills in a future posting. Miklos Sarvary, Professor at INSEAD titles his contribution "The Metaverse: TV of the Future?". Sarvey asserts "Within five years, the dominant internet interface is likely to be the metaverse, a term used to describe interactive multiplayer games such as Second Life." Organizations need to prepare for the coming of the metaverse. INSEAD "opened a virtual campus on Second Life to find the answers." Jan Chipchase suggests "In an increasingly connected future, the data trails from all these sources will create a massive universe of metadata. ... In the brave new world of aggregated data, companies will need to monitor themselves as well." Lew McCreary suggests PDAs are and will become "excuse technology". "Anticipate, therefore, epidemic levels of BlackBerry and Treo-constrained recollection of important decisions made in your presence or of orders you've issued to your teams." Michael J. Mauboussin asserts "As computing power grows and networks unleash the wisdom of crowds, the unique value of experts in making predictions and solving problems is steadily narrowing." Well on to 2009 and more predictions next year. Thanks HBR for looking ahead once in awhile. Source: Harvard Business Review; February 2008, Vol. 86 Issue 2, pp. 17-45. March 30, 2008vBusiness, Entrepreneuring and Decision SupportRecently I received approval at my university, University of Northern Iowa, to teach an experimental course called vBusiness Entrepreneurial Strategy using Linden Lab's Second Life virtual world. My BI friends know how busy I am so I am planning to get help from my new friends in Second Life. We all have much to learn about operating and conducting business in a virtual world. The 3 credit course starts Tuesday, May 13 and meets for 7 weeks on Tuesdays and Thursday from 2pm-3:15pm PDT. Following each lecture/discussion workshop, students will take a tour, make a site visit, conduct an interview and/or meet with their mentor. The course includes writing a vBusiness Plan that must be reviewed and approved, executing it for 6 weeks and writing an analysis of the vBusiness successes, challenges and results. Final projects are due August 1, 2008. My students will be virtual business owners. They will experience operating a business in Second Life and they may have a real life link. For example, a student might sell Iowa post cards or memorabilia in Second Life and also offer to mail a post card from Iowa in real life with the sender's message for a fee and collect the payment in Second Life in the local exchange called Lindens. What does this project have to do with decision support? Students will need to use the Second Life reporting tools and find software to track visitors. Also, they will use and perhaps create decision support tools. In general, I think innovative decision support will help vBusinesses succeed. So what are the keys to entrepreneuring in a virtual world? I am still learning so this is a preliminary list: 1. Relationships are the key to success in a virtual business, so find a global network of partners, build customer relationships using a Second Life group. Give people who help a stake in your success. Always remember a virtual world is a complex social network. Participate and build a friends list! 2. Target a customer/product niche that can be identified. Know who will buy from you, why and when? A virtual world allows extensive segmentation, just make sure the niche is large enough to generate sufficient revenue. 3. Keep focused on 2-3 short range goals. Virtual worlds are changing rapidly as the technology improves. Get in quick, sell what you can, move on or grow. Remember franchising and formula facilities. Help newcomers. 4. Prepare a written business plan like you would for any start-up business. vBusiness is real business. Your goal is to make money. Make a plan! 5. A vBusiness should operate 24/7/365. Automate some operations, but in many cases you need to staff globally to keep the traffic coming. Find and hire people who have social networks and who are in different time zones. 6. Reward the people who make your vBusiness a success. Consider franchising or bonuses. Virtual worlds are expanding and good friends who help make a business a success are the future of any vBusiness. Strive to create stable relationships in the fast changing virtual world. 7. Start-up is reasonably inexpensive in a virtual world like Second Life, but cash management is important. The medium of exchange, Lindens, fluctuates and taking money "out of the game" may be difficult. Project cash needs and have a plan to get cash in and out. Good accounting and forecasting is still needed in a vBusiness! 8. Find a competitive edge or advantage that you can exploit. The vBusiness advantage may be a "hard to imitate" inworld product or service, quick response with delivery of real world solutions, entertainment tie-ins with copyrighted materials or ... ? let your imagination guide you to new sources of sustainable advantage. Everything in a virtual world is not free and easy to copy. Learn about permissions and ownership in virtual worlds. 9. Take calculated risks and be prepared to bail out if serious loses occur. Business in a virtual world remains fragile and problematic for some goods and services. Just because you can show a product to people in a virtual world doesn't mean there will be a real world or in world demand. Also, prices are generally low for products in virtual worlds. Of course once the product is created, production costs are also very low. The time spent creating a virtual product is a "sunk cost" so price accordingly. Premium pricing only works if the product is hard to imitate. 10. Change, adaptability and uncertainty are the reality of vBusiness. Entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on a virtual world marketplace need to learn about the rapidly changing market and become part of the relevant "community" targeted for the product or service. A day is 4 hours long in Second Life and sometimes it seems that given the global audience, one day in Real Life is six days of change in Second Life. Contact me if you want more information on vBusiness Entrepreneuring. March 9, 2008DSW on YouTube and Iowa MetaverseMy week has been very busy and productive. Using Second Life leverages my time and my global connections. On March 3, 2008 a DecisionSupportWorld.com video went "live" on the net. It is narrated by me, Dan Power aka Leinad Meriman, and it was produced by Selby Evans aka Thinkerer Melville. Selby was a Professor of Psychology at Texas Christian University for many years until he retired and he continues to do independent consulting in behavioral research and on the use of Second Life for Decision Support. Follow the links: Video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OksmgCsYeZ4 (5 minutes 45 seconds) Video on Blip. tv -- the wmv version: http://blip.tv/file/get/ThinkererMelville-DecisionSupportWorld334.wmv The video is a tour hosted by my avatar of Decision Support World (DSW) headquarters in Linden Labs' Second Life. Decision Support World (DSW) also hosted Decision Support Workshop #9 on Friday, March 7, 2008 at 11 am PST. The host was George Kurtz aka Butch Dae on the topic "3D Mindmaps: SL Developments". Avatar Goedeke Messmer discussed programming issues for an inworld tool. The workshop was at TechTalk@SL Discussion Center. DSS Workshop #10 will be on "Active Spatial Immersion Meeting Tools for Second Life" with presenter Julio Cesar Molina, Graduate Student at the Technical University of Eindhoven, on Friday, March 14 at 11am PST. Join us. My newest project is Iowa Metaverse, Inc. (http://iowametaverse.com/). Iowa Metaverse, Inc. is a Nonprofit Iowa 501(c)(3) corporation. The mission and purposes of Iowa Metaverse, Inc. are educational and charitable. The specific mission is to develop and operate regions, islands and servers in and for virtual worlds, what has been called the the metaverse. Iowa Metaverse attempts to educate and inform people with regard to economic opportunity in the State of Iowa, to living in and relocating to the State of Iowa and opportunities for visiting and tourism in the State of Iowa. When appropriate Iowa Metaverse, Inc. will help other States and regions requiring aid in such projects. Metaverse comes from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash. The term is widely used to describe the vision behind current work on fully immersive 3D virtual spaces like Linden Labs' Second Life or There.com. In these environments, people interact as avatars with each other, both socially and economically, and sometimes with software agents in a cyber space, that uses the metaphor of the real world, but without its physical limitations. Iowa Metaverse, Inc. now has its first island in Second Life called Iowa. I am trying to use virtual worlds technologies to help people make specific decisions about locating plants and offices, tourist destinations and even where to live and work. For more information on Iowa Metaverse, Inc., contact me: Daniel Power, Executive Director Visit Iowa in Second Life: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Iowa/129/122/27 Now I have 2 computers and 2 monitors on my desk linked by a program called Synergy. One mouse and keyboard works with both systems. I just drag the cursor from one screen to another. My multitasking has moved to a new level. March 2, 2008Hiring a Decision Support ConsultantOver the past 25 years, almost all of my consulting has been the result of referrals. But I have a full-time teaching job, so I do very little consulting. I have not really had to market my services or cultivate referral networks. In general, my teaching duties, my writing and my web sites have kept me very busy for the past 13 years. Prior to 1995, I was an administrator at the University and did not really do any consulting for those 6 years. The few projects I do a year are related to identifying/evaluating software, training or research. Currently, I am only looking for virtual world related decision support consulting. So this blog posting is not about me. Rather I want to offer some independent advice for those folks who might be in the market looking for professional help related to building, buying, designing or evaluating decision support systems. First, I think any company with sales over USD $50 million needs annual independent advice for the Information Technology folks and management on decision support. This should be a check up and visit with a general practitioner. It is better to talk to people like Claudia Imhoff, Colin White and Jill Dyché routinely rather than waiting until you have a problem. The very large companies seem to be the worst offenders, the IT folks seem convinced they can "doctor" themselves or just attend conferences like Teradata or TDWI. Second, hire the smartest generalist you can find and let that person get to know your company. A good consultant needs to become familiar with the "client" environment. Develop an ongoing relationship with the consultant that emphasizes candor. Third, when you have specific projects, get advice on staffing internally versus hiring contract or specialist consultants. Don't always assume the professionals at the vendor are the best or the worst people to work with. Sort out what is best for the project and the ongoing development and maintenance of the system. Fourth, when in doubt get a second opinion. A significant decision support investment should be worth some up front investment in advice. Please check with my colleagues on the Business Intelligence Network™ when you need, want, should want or might want expert decision support advice. Also, attend conferences and meet the people who talk about decision support, analytics and business intelligence. In general, get referrals and references. Hire the best person you can afford. February 3, 2008Handbook on Decision Support SystemsYesterday I received my copy of the Handbook of Decision Support Systems, a 2 volume compendium, compiled and edited by Professors Frada Burstein, Monash Univ., and Clyde Holsapple, Univ. of Kentucky. The handbook published by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg (springer.com) has 71 chapters and is 1610 pages of content plus indexes, table of contents, prefaces, author biographies. The handbook has been a multi-year project and I contributed a chapter and reviewed some of the chapters. In one day I can not read 1610 pages. But let me give blog readers a few quick highlights. Volume 1 is subtitled "Basic Themes" and Volume 2 is "Variations". The Preface begins "Decision Support Systems comprise a core subject area of the information systems (IS) discipline, being one of several major expansions that have occurred in the IS field." This handbook is a reference guide for the subject area. DSS is a wide frontier as the editors note and the 71 chapters take us on a journey of review and exploration. No one is likely to carefully read the handbook 2 volume set from beginning to end. Rather sample the material, read the abstracts, skim and read what seems interesting or new. Volume 1 starts with a section on Foundations and my Chapter 7 traces the history of DSS as a "stream of research and practice" beginning in the late 1960s. Volume 1 is USD$ 249.00 and Volume 2 is $239.00. So far I think the handbook is an important reference for every library and a valuable reference for anyone serious about computerized decision support. Reference Power, D., "Decision Support Systems: A Historical Overview," in F. Burstein and C. W. Holsapple (eds.), Handbook of Decision Support Systems 1: Basic Themes, Springer, 2008, pp. 121-140. ISBN: 978-3-540-48712-8 January 28, 2008Reduce decision cycle time AND improve accuracyMicky Long and Sumair Dutta recently completed a report for Aberdeen Group titled "Get Smart: Business Intelligence for Service Organizations". Do managers and executives need to make faster and more accurate decisions? especially in customer service situations? Supposedly YES and in general I agree. Can Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics tools help reduce decision cycle time? YES if deployed correctly. No magic in reducing decision cyclye time AND making more accurate decisions. Faster decisions can lead to less accurate decisions if decision support technology is poorly implemented. "Aberdeen found that nearly 80% of service executives surveyed either have in place or plan within the next twelve months to implement a BI / analytics solution within their service operation." The marketing email I received from Aberdeen Research claimed: "Best-in-Class firms gained 37% in first-time fix rate since adoption of business intelligence or analytics." "Best-in-Class firms gained 42% in performance on service level agreement since adoption of business intelligence or analytics." "Best-in-Class firms gained 57% in performance on customer retention since adoption of business intelligence or analytics." The 20+ page report costs USD $395. I haven't read it, but I am very skeptical of a report based on survey data when few firms have adopted a specific decision support technology for the same purpose. It is so easy to compare and tabulate apples and oranges, very different DSS. Also, is "best-in-class" the early adopters? I would need to know much more information about the sample, the questionnaire and the data analysis before I used this report to justify purchasing technology in a service organization to enhance customer service. If you have read the report and think it is an important contribution to understanding the impact of BI and analytics, please send me an email: power@dssresources.com. January 16, 2008Forrester -- virtual worlds analysisReaders know I have been working on DecisionSupportWorld.com and on a Second Life headquarters for Decision Support World and 2 major in-world decision support projects. So I read with interest the executive summary of Forrester's report "Getting Real Work Done In Virtual Worlds" (1/7/2008). Erica Driver, Paul Jackson and crew are definitely optimistic about the future of virtual worlds for decision support. The executive summary reads: "Virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, and more business-focused offerings are on the brink of becoming valuable work tools. Major companies and public-sector organizations — such as BP, IBM, Intel, and the US Army — are investing heavily in virtual world technologies. But it's still early, pioneering days. You've practically got to be a gamer to use most of these tools — setup can be arduous, navigating in a 3-D environment takes practice, and processing and bandwidth requirements remain high. But within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today. Information and knowledge management professionals should begin to investigate and experiment with virtual worlds. Use them to try to replicate the experience of working physically alongside others; allow people to work with and share digital 3-D models of physical or theoretical objects; and make remote training and counseling more realistic by incorporating nonverbal communication into same-time, different-place interactions." The 24 page report costs US $279.00. Check
"Forrester interviewed 14 vendor and user companies, including Forterra Systems, Gemini Mobile Technologies, IBM, Icarus Studios, Kaneva, Linden Lab, PA Consulting, Qwaq, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Unisfair, Virtual Heroes, Vivox, and VRWorkplace." Definitely a small sample! What did they get right? It is time for major companies with distributed operations to seriously experiment with using Second Life for decision support. What did they get wrong? There is a learning curve, but you certainly do NOT need to be "a gamer to use most of these tools". Setup is a bit time consuming because the client is large, updates are still too frequent, bandwidth should not be a problem in most global companies. Corporate IT people can easily handle set for Second Life. Training managers to use Second Life will help and an in-world mentor is a big plus. We can do this! Visit me (aka Leinad Meriman) in Second Life at Also check Decision Support World Thanks to George Kurtz aka Butch Dae for forwarding me Virtual Worlds Weekly, Volume 2, Issue 2, January 15, 2008, which had a story on the Forrester report.
January 4, 2008Decision Support Workshops in SLDecision Support World (http://decisionsupportworld.com) sponsored the first Decision Support Workshop in Second Life this morning, Friday, January 4, 2008, at 7am PST. I (Dan Power aka Leinad Meriman) spoke at the workshop on the topic of the most recent Decision Support Q & A in DSS News "What is a modern decision support system?". The workshop was hosted by Emil Stoyanov at the TechTalk@SL discussion area. We had 12 people for the workshop, but a great start. Next week, Friday, January 11, 2008 at 8am PST (1 hour later than today's session), DSW will sponsor Decision Support Workshop #2. The workshop focuses on a recent column in DSS News. Check Power, D., "Can multi-user visual simulations provide real world decision support?" DSS News, Vol. 8, No. 13, July 1, 2007, URL http://dssresources.com/newsletters/193.php. Also, check Richard Hackathorn's article "Serious Games in Virtual Worlds: The Future of Enterprise Business Intelligence" in his expert channel. I'll ask Richard to host a workshop on that topic at a future DSW Decision Support Workshop in SL. Decision Support Workshops are planned as a regular series of weekly workshops with new presentations each week. I will present at initial workshops and then we hope to have guest experts. The workshops are free and open, so join us and share this information with people interested in computerized decision support. Also, in SL please join the group Decision Support. Workshops in Second Life will be a supplement and in some cases replacement for Webinars. Today was a return to normalcy for me. The politicians are gone, decision support is center stage once again in my life both RL and SL. Last night I was elected as one of 2 Clinton delegates for my precinct to the Black Hawk County, Iowa Democratic convention in March. That is the next step in the Iowa caucus process. In my precinct, 257 of my neighbors attended and we filled a gym at the local middle school. 114 people registered to vote as Democrats at the entrance to the caucus room. Many were independents, many young voters, and most came to caucus for Senator Barack Obama. Obama brought many new people to the caucus process. In my precinct Obama received 5 delegates, Clinton 2, and Edwards 2. The race is under way to the Novemeber 2008 elections. My guess is both parties need much better decision support. December 23, 2007Tracking Presidential CandidatesFormer President Bill Clinton and "Magic" Johnson made a campaign appearance to support Hillary on Tuesday, Dec. 18 at the Boys and Girls Club of Black Hawk County, Iowa. My wife, 19 year old son Ben and I attended with about 300 other people. We were in the gym. Magic gives a great "fire up" speech and Bill is "still Bill". Politics is in full-swing in Iowa. Tracking the candidates is much easier with the Web! For those interested in Presidential politics, check the map of campaign appearances by Presidential candidates at http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/schedules/pastevents/index.html#candidate99 You can see the dense purple visit clouds over Iowa and New Hampshire. You can "play" a week by week animation; you can zoom in on Iowa, you can look at visits by a single candidate for a specific period of time. So what can we conclude from eye-balling this historical data? 1) Clinton has focused on the "major" cities in Iowa, but she has been all over the state. She recently completed an "All 99 counties matter tour". 19 events in Des Moines from April 1, 2007 to December 23, 2007 according to the mouseover data popup. 2) Obama has concentrated on "major" cities with 26 events in Des Moines. 3) Edwards has been in Iowa the most and 27 events in Des Moines. 4) Huckabee has focused heavily on Des Moines (27 events) and western Iowa. 5) Giuliani has been in 32 Iowa cities, including 6 events in Des Moines. So I'm not seeing Giuliani on TV (and we have continuous political ads) but he has not completely avoided Iowa. You can see his focus on New hampshire. 6) Romney has only been in Des Moines for 9 events, but he has been in the wealthy western Des Moines suburbs for an additional 11 events. Well, I watched Ron Paul on "Meet the Press with Tim Russert" this morning and he actually made some sense. Interesting race for President shaping up with at least 3 viable Democrats and 3 Republicans. I'll probably attend a few more campaign events, but the snow here in Iowa is reducing the crowds and challenging the candidates and their staffs who are driving our rural interstates. Stay warm! December 4, 2007Reinventing the wheel -- Decision AutomationJames Taylor, in the EDM blog, recently commented on "structured decision systems" (SDS). James mentioned Rob Meredith's blog post on the subject at Monash University. Rob's post is at http://monashbi.blogspot.com/2007/11/it-archaeology-whatever-happened-to-sds.html. You can read James's comments at http://www.edmblog.com/weblog/. The bottom line is that we have been trying to use computers to apply rules for routine, structured decisions for more than 40 years. Enterprise Decision Management or EDM is another buzzword. I'm as guilty as James, I am promoting use of the phrase "decision automation" at DecisionAutomation.com. The fact is that we can automate and routinize many more decision today than at anytime in the past 40 years and the needs for and cost benefits of decision automation, structured decision systems or enterprise decision management are driving adoption. November 29, 2007Managing Information LoadThe evidence is substantial that the amount of information that is received impacts strategies for processing information and making choices, the time spent in decision making, and decision accuracy/quality. The relation between increasing information and improved decision making is not however linear. Rather the relation is an inverted U, that is decision making improves as more information is received, until an inflection point is reached where no impovement occurs and then more information creates an overload and decision making performance declines. Decision support systems should help manage information load. The impact of information quantity does vary based on cognitive capabilities, but the range of capabilities among managers is narrow compared with the general population. So in our managerial DSS user interface designs we should be able to anticipate load problems and reduce them. Why am I blogging about information load today? Because I'm inundated by information on the Web and the volume is increasing. How can we manage information load better? Take a quick look at DSSResources.com or www.b-eye-network.com. So much information!!!! No one can be expected to read it all. So we creates topics and categories, and "best of the best" lists, to organize and manage information. And we still need people involved to do this well. The hope has been that people who post information will tag it and that the Web can be self-organizing through search engines and other "meta" aggregation tools. Perhaps ... but I still think knowledge repositories created by experts in a topic area will be the best sources of information and the best way to manage information load. I need to do more on my sites ... managing information is an ongoing struggle and new technologies provide me new tools, but finding the time to use them is however a challenge. So I'll work on improving the categorization, topics, tags and navigation of DSSResources.com, PlanningSkills.com and DecisionAutomation.com. I'm also planning to expand the information content at the same time. This is a new year's resolution made early. This blog contributes to the information load ... I put this posting in a new category called Decision Support and I tried to write an informative title. |
Comprehensive resources for business intelligence and data warehousing professionals.
NETWORK WEBSITES:
BeyeSEARCH | BeyeBLOGS | BeyeRESEARCH | TDAN.com | BeyeNETWORK
Press Releases | About Us | Contact Us | Site Map | Privacy Policy | Media Kit
Copyright 2004 — 2008. Powell Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Business Intelligence Network™ is a trademark of Powell Media, LLC