Real Business Intelligence Insights: Decision Intelligence for Connecting Data, Actions, and Outcomes
Fred Isbell
Driving Digital-first Marketing Transformation and the art & science of B2B Marketing through Thought Leadership, Marketing Analytics, and Marketing Intelligence and Strategy
Dresner Advisory Services has been covering the Business Intelligence market for over 14 years, and our team of analysts providing primary research has over 200 years combined experience.?Our 2021 Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study Report provides a well-rounded, representative, and real-world perspective on the market.?Our robust portfolio of research includes many related solutions, including Data Science and Machine Learning.?This growing area of importance includes statistics, modeling, machine learning, and data mining, to analyze facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events.?These are an important area and key to the future of BI, data, and analytics.
Our fifth annual Real Business Intelligence conference coming up September 21st and 22nd 2021 is an on-line data and analytics event expressly for “Data Leaders”. This year’s conference will again feature an outstanding faculty of thought leader speakers.?We recently had the chance to discuss the Real Business Intelligence Conference, Decision Intelligence and more with one of this year’s luminary keynote speakers, Dr. Lorien Pratt.?She is Chief Scientist and Cofounder Quantellia LLC a software and consulting company offering machine learning and decision intelligence software and services.
Q: Dr. Pratt, what are the key themes you expect to deliver in your Workshop: Connect Data, Actions, and Outcomes for a Better World at this year’s Real Business Intelligence Conference??How can “Data Leaders” leverage the concept of Decision Intelligence, and move beyond Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence with a sophisticated integrated approach we all can use?
A: ?Chances are that many of your attendees have started to recognize a gap in the data science stack: decision makers think in terms of actions and outcomes, yet data science provides answers, insights, facts, and predictions.?So, I’ll start by explaining this BI “last mile” gap, then talk about how decision intelligence is a decade-old field that fills it.?
I’ll describe a second important problem addressed by Decision Intelligence (DI), which is that technology assets aren’t well integrated: we typically have a number of statistical models, some machine learning models, a BI tool, a data lake, and sources of data like Microsoft Sharepoint and SAP.?As it turns out, the action-to-outcome pattern also provides a mechanism to integrate these BI assets together.?
A third key theme is that of “solutionism”: technologies often start with ingredients like data and ask, “how can we use this”, instead of starting with the problems faced by business users. DI helps us to shift to an end-user focus—which encompasses design thinking and more—and then to work backwards from our users to technology like AI models.
It turns out that simply drawing a picture of a decision has a lot of value, even without any data or technology attached.?If all goes well, during the workshop we’ll be “live mapping” a complex decision.?I’ve never done this with more than 20 people at once, so it’s going to be an interesting experiment to do it with the workshop participants.???I figure it’s good to live on the edge.
I cannot understate how exciting is DI: it is the next important discipline that not only addresses the above problems, but by integrating multiple technologies, it also allows us to address a class of problems that haven’t been possible to address before: those that involve complex systems elements like feedback effects along with intangibles like band and reputation.?From an AI point of view, for example, DI is the next important discipline to learn.?From a business leaders’ point of view, DI brings data and evidence to the boardroom.
Q: You pose a great challenge in your workshop -- why aren't our most powerful new data and analytical technologies being used to solve the world's most important problems: poverty, conflict, inequality, employment, disease, productivity??What are some stories and case studies of Decision Intelligence pioneers you will cover, and what key benefits and solutions do they have in common?
A: I will describe a program with over 10,000 projects crossing over 50 countries that DI helped to solve: a massive data effort was reduced to the data in a spreadsheet, because when you look at a problem through a decision and not a data lens the data needs are usually massively reduced.??I will describe a G20 central bank that is starting up a centralized DI initiative, will tell you about how NASA is integrating decisions at multiple levels, and more.
Q: We did extensive research during the COVID-19 pandemic on its overall impact on BI projects, budgets, and plans, and saw that those organizations who kept moving forward fared relatively better. Dr. Pratt, you are not only a “COVID-19 survivor”, but you developed a sophisticated COVID-19 simulation.?Should another global pandemic or similar “black swan events” occur, how can Decision Intelligence and related solutions be used to mitigate/ameliorate their overall impact?
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A: One silver lining to the pandemic is that it has shone a bright light on a certain class of problems: those that involve multi-link thinking, need multiple disciplines to solve (data science, computational fluid dynamics, medical trial results, building information management, and more), include important elements of human behavior, and must combine these all to help us make better decisions.
I will show you a video of an immersive video game-like environment that lets users experiment with different decisions regarding COVID-19, and to “kill simulated people” instead of real ones.?I started coding the first version of this software when I was sick with Covid-19 myself (I’ll admit it, I’m a coding nerd).?Using environments like this is what pilots do in flight simulators—an arena that in the past years is thousands of times less dangerous than Covid-19—so of course we need to bring this technology to the realm of the pandemic.
But the pandemic is only one example of a problem that is multidisciplinary, requires multi-link thinking, involves exponential effects, and whose effects are invisible until it’s too late. Climate is another example of a problem like this.?
The idea of decision intelligence is that it makes the invisible, visible, and gives us a way to think about complex situations like this that doesn’t make our heads explode.?We do this by a) looking at one decision at a time, and b) forcing the technology to fit how humans naturally think (about actions and outcomes) instead of the other way around.?I will show you how DI is very promising for these kinds of situations.
Dr. Pratt thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with us, and we appreciate your great insights as a thought leader and visionary.?We look forward to your keynote Connect Data, Actions, and Outcomes for a Better World at this year’s Real Business Intelligence Conference and your outstanding contribution to our program. ???
Be sure to visit the Real Business Intelligence 2021 Web site for the latest information on content and speakers and register now for the on-line event.?As a bonus, ticket sales help benefit charity.?Be sure to join the Dresner Advisory Services team for their free educational Luncheon Learning webinars.
Dr. Lorien Pratt is Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of Quantellia, a Machine Learning pioneer, Decision Intelligence co-inventor, author, speaker, consultant, coder, and a COVID-19 survivor.
Fred Isbell is a Research Director at Dresner Advisory Services, a high technology industry marketing veteran and former Senior Marketing Director for SAP Global Marketing.???