What exactly is an insight?!

The term insight is being thrown around these days like it’s clearly understood, easily arrived at, and universally shared. It’s not. By now it has acquired the Hall of Corporate Fame’s status of bs, sorry, cow alternative fuel, where every trivial report is labeled “insight.”

Insight is truly rare. Let me demonstrate with an example from the geopolitical sphere and then bring it into business context. ?

In a recent issue of The Strategy Bridge, one of the best venues for pure strategic thinking, John F. Sullivan, a former U.S. Army China Foreign Area Officer, ventured into the interpretation of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. His short essay is a masterpiece of both debunking earlier works and deriving an insight for modern times. He takes one word off in a verse in the text and turns its traditional translation on its head. The verse: “In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.” Similar text applies to the enemy’s army- better to preserve (take whole) than destroy.

Sounds almost humanistic, and surely in line with those who claim China is less aggressive than the West.

Mr. Sullivan’s skepticism shows that this is an unlikely translation of one word (!) “preserve” or quan in Chinese, and the better one is that of self-preservation, not enemy preservation: “Preserving one’s own state (army/battalions/companies/squads) is a commander’s highest duty; destroying the enemy’s state (army/battalions/companies/squads) is a secondary objective.” By changing the interpretation of one word, Mr. Sullivan completely changes the meaning of the strategy. ?

Quan?

That’s original. But what’s the insight?

Mr. Sullivan’s suggests that China at this point prefers to “preserve” itself by avoiding open military conflict with the United States, but simultaneously, it might order “a violently executed, full-scale military invasion of Taiwan if it determines that seizing the island is vital to the regime’s survival and the relative balance of forces skews in its favor.” His view is supported by another verse in the Art of War that says, “if you pursue your own program, and bring your prestige and influence to bear on the enemy, you can take his walled cities and lay waste to his state.”

The realistic view is that CCP’s dogma of self-preservation comes first, followed by approval of very violent destruction of enemies if such objective becomes feasible without risking self-preservation. This has practical implications for policy makers (if they listen).

From Sun Tzu to your company

Whether you like the above insight or not, doesn’t matter. What matters, though, is the nature of insight. It is exactly how Stan Sthanunathan, formerly the Executive Vice President of Consumer and Market Insights at Unilever, described insight in a recent interview.

Courtesy of @Jonathan Dunnett, whose Smart Decision compilation brought this interview to my attention, I read with delight Mr. Sthanunathan somewhat nontraditional definition of insight:

“I always tell people, the way you [gain a seat at the table B.G.]… is by creating enough and more ‘oh s&!t’ moments. That, to me, is a significant KPI. How many ‘oh s&!t’ moments will you create? How often your business partners come and look at you and say, oh my g*d, I never thought of it that way. And the more you create the more respect you will draw.”

This definition is exactly how I define competitive intelligence but on a more strategic level: An “Oh, S&!t” moment. A market insight (not just consumer, and not just brand-product) that management (“business partners” as Mr. Sthanunathan calls his internal clients) says,

I never thought of it this way.

All else is effectively busy work CI analysts must produce to stay employed but what Mr. Sthanunathan says, so clearly, you don’t get a seat at the table by producing mostly routine information.

you don’t get a seat at the table by producing mostly routine information.

Mr. Sthanunathan is also clear about the limited value of AI: “With only artificial intelligence, we run the risk of being limited in our vision.?When we add human intelligence, we can create a fabulous journey.” Competition analysts do not fear AI. Stick fetchers should.?AI is the ultimate stick fetcher.

Alternative perspective: I am not a fan of Sun Tzu’s work by any means though ‘know thyself and know thy enemy’ is a good start and I am a great admirer of anyone who says Thy. What’s left of course is the tiny issue of how do you take advantage of this Thy knowledge. That’s where Stan Sthanunathan’s “roadmap” excels by telling managers to move from an insight into an idea (how to exploit it) and then into impact. In CIP? classes we call it strategic options and we measure CI effectiveness by measuring its impact, not by the number of speeches one gives at conferences. ?But as of today, I am a fan of one, John Sullivan who derived a whole “oh, shit” moment for me by turning on one word in an ancient text.

Here is another insight based on a recent article on MSN, which details how Ivy League turned graduate degrees into profitable scam, running students’ debt into 200K-300K:?