Spreadsheet Fever: Information Overload Cost Estimate
December 31, 2008
Trophy kids with MBAs seem to have migrated from banking to consulting, or at least some did. When I read “Info Overload Costs $900 Billion, Blame Mr. Rogers” in Ars Technica here, I laughed–a while in fact. The Ars Technica story reported findings from a study generated by a New York azure chip consultant. As you may know, there are blue chip consultants like McKinsey and Bain. Then there are azure chip consultants. These are outfits hoping that the intellectual wavelength shifts to allow their firms to jump to the blue chip level. With studies like the one referenced by Ars Technica, it will be a while before the recruiters for the blue chips beat a path to the wizards behind the Information Overload Calculator here. You must visit the link, plug in your values, and get your rock solid cost estimate. The outfit behind the Calculator is Basex here. The firm’s tag line is a great one indeed: “Management science for the knowledge economy.” From my mud floored office in Harrods Creek, the “knowledge economy” does not look too peppy at this point in time. As a survivor of the original Booz, Allen & Hamilton meat grinder, I am also skeptical of “management science.” In my opinion, “management science” is an oxymoron, but what do I know. Earlier today I learned to great fanfare that Microsoft is a software company. Man, what an insight was that revelation. Ars Technica handles the write up of the Calculator with journalistic objectivity. The comment in the article that interested me was this one about search:
Another big time sink, says Spira [an expert cited by Ars Technica] , comes from the need to sort through reams of data to find the particular piece of information a worker needs. He claims that about half of web searches fail—other estimates put the figure closer to 30 percent—and that almost half of what those users regard as successful are really partial failures, because the information recovered is outdated or inaccurate. Part of the solution, Spira argues, is better search algorithms. “Most search is done now by keyword,” says Spira, “and that’s a terrible way of searching—by itself. It’s not terrible when it’s done in conjunction with taxonomies. But if I can’t narrow down my search, how does the search engine know what my goal is?”
You can figure out whom the Ars Technica reporter is interviewing. For me, this is one more trip down the return on investment garden path. Estimates of time wasted are not useful in my opinion. I worked on a year long study of innovation for a Fortune 50 company for a year. I watched quite a few geniuses and wizards in action. I recall thinking that these guys and gals fiddled around a lot. One wizard at a large defense company told me that ideas came while she slept. She worked on “work” on weekends. During the work day, she fiddled around. The product emerging from this clear example of wasting time was the machine gun ammunition clip for a high speed cannon.
The leap to search is a common mental jump among trophy and entitlement thinkers. The idea of remembering, analyzing, and synthesizing data over time is a novel one. Check out the article and copy down the data. I think quite a few azure chip outfits will be recycling the data or inventing their own content free calculators. In my view, using the Calculator wastes just wastes time.
Stephen Arnold, December 31, 2008
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