In today’s fast changing business environment, one of the hardest tasks of any business manager is learning how to ask ‘smart questions’.
By smart questions, I mean questions that when answered, will reveal meaningful ‘insight’ from seemingly disparate information.
For instance, in his book, "As the Future Catches You" by Juan Enriquez, Mr. Enriquez makes the point that bioinformatics and by extension, the number of patents filed, increasingly indicate the level of wealth a particular country will achieve.
So I did some research, and no surprise, I find a very direct correlation between the number of patents filed and the average income level of a U.S. state.
In particular, if you take a look at this xCelsius dashboard, which if you press the button below, you can download and explore for free, you can freely explore the relationship.
We can only break it down by state level but the data at the county level really tells the story.
Sometimes, for instance, in my home state of Indiana, the relationship between higher incomes and number of patents filed show up in very unexpected counties.
The point of this exercise is that in order to do this analysis, it required me to first ask the question-is there a relationship, whether causal or correlational in nature, between the number of patents filed in a particular state and the average income achieved by the citizens of that state.
Turns out, there is a strong relationship, but the data that tells you that is located in two separate government agencies, in this case, the U.S. Census Department and the USPTO or United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The tool, in this case, SAP’s xCelsius® Dashboard tool, along with a whole series of other tools that were involved in getting this data into the dashboard, such as the internet, Excel®, Flash®, and many others, was great for providing the ‘insight’ revealed by this information.
SAP BW Consulting has the consulting resources to help you not only ask the right questions, but to deliver the ‘insight’ you are looking for, sometimes finding it in the most unexpected places.
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