Predicting BI trends and saying you’re sorry
We forget most failed predictions quickly. If you make a bad one, you just say “let’s move on,” and you’re as good as moved on. But sometimes you meet the kind of guy I say hello to near my office—the kind professional forecasters hope they never meet.
Off the charts: “black swan” ahead?
“Black swans” are the anti-gravity of predictive analytics. These events are so far off the charts that we dismiss the possibility out of hand. But when one occurs, it’s a doozy. The Panic of ’08 may lead us straight into one of these, says Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by [...]
Did someone say “panic”? Not in BI
Last January, I surveyed BI consultants to see what the season’s recession was doing to BI. Things were going fine, most reported. This week I’m following up with them on the Panic of ’08.
A new day for data
Almost no one has mentioned Government 2.0 in the same breath as business intelligence—yet they’re destined for each other.
BI for the lone wolf
Who says one-person operations can’t use business intelligence? I don’t want MicroStrategy to outfit my tiny office, now near San Francisco, with its latest and greatest. No, but I do want a company like Intuit, ever more interested in the one-person market, to understand that money isn’t the only data individuals should track.
When economists say “slowdown”
If there’s one reliable sign that a recession is coming, it’s when the experts say they see none coming. I’ve survived four. “Oh, maybe a slowdown, yes…” they say. Now, in today’s New York Times, Charles Duhigg argues that what’s unlikely is a “full blown depression.” Quoth Duhigg: Why? Because so many of them have [...]
Human benefits for BI itself in a slower economy
If this year’s economic slowdown lets BI-ready companies “kill the competition,” as one consultant I talked to last week expects them to, BI itself will win in not-so-obvious ways. First, if BI really does show its stuff, projects will attract and keep good people more easily. “Every BI client have been people-short,” says Sid Adelman, [...]
What a recession might mean for business intelligence
BI was made for turbulent times, wasn’t it? At least the handful of consultants I talked to this week think so. There seems to be not a shred of fear among them. I’m writing the story for TDWI.
BI predictions out the other end
I’ve read about an 84-year-old farmer in North Dakota who reads pig spleens the way mainstream fortune tellers read tarot. Sadly, he doesn’t service the business intelligence industry.
