The New Know is a book by Thornton May published in 2009 about business analytics. Now there are many books published about business analytics, but most of these focus on the ideas, methods or technologies behind analytics.

This one caught my attention because it is specifically about using analytics to support innovation.

May contrasts the old know, which he describes as “unaugmented human cognition” and the “mysterious arts of decision making”, with the New Know which he describes as the ability to collect, organise, analyse and act on the exponentially increasing mass of information …..

May states “In the not so distant future, guessing/making things up, not having the right data, or employing the the wrong algorithms to data will come to be viewed as termination offenses …”

In the context of this blog we view the New Know as being a lot about how we assemble insights about markets, customer requirements, and new capabilities. Using data mining to explore journal, patent and conference data for instance can open new views of what is possible and how stretch objectives in innovation might be achieved. Importantly it also helps identify the who part of the question. Who is pushing the boundaries in this knowledge space – for instance?

Synthesising the information, opening it to opinion and debate and then presenting it effectively so that informed insights become plain to many is where technology roadmapping fits into the picture.

Many organisations remain simply happy to guess.

May observes that the desire to know will define the next quarter century.  The New Know focusses on what can be known, what must be known and most important, what actions can be taken because you do know.

May’s thesis is that innovation is subject to probabilities and chance. As such, innovation performancecan be materially improved by the enlightened use of business analytics. He goes on to state: “To innovate without the assistance of business analytics is madness.”

We agree.

Future articles on this channel will explore this point and deal with how to make effective use of analytics to effectively enhance your innovation investment decision making.

Clear indicators exist that May’s insights are appreciated by some of the more agile thinkers. Evidence to this effect can be viewed here.

More information on Thornton May.