Thanks for the comment.

Having spent much of the evening on a primer map for the Absent in Melanoma 2 gene (long story), maybe you have a point with the biological analogy.

I guess a number of words could come after ‘knowledge’ I simply repeated the ideas of Bellinger, Castro and Mills.

Peter

I’d like to contribute a slightly different perspective if I may…

If someone tried to put the same spin on the relative value of say, atoms to molecules to amino acids to proteins, I don’t think you’d get the same response. I see a ‘data is a second-class citizen’ attitude all the time, and the people who partake in the bias fail miserably as integrators.

The reason, IMHO, is that they make the same classic mistake that most ‘educated’ people make: the little things are somehow less important than the ‘big’ things of which they are a part. One only need examine the silos of intelligence all over today’s enterprises and ask from whence they came and why they can’t easily communicate with other equally intelligent silos to see the proof.

The importance of atomic forms, behavior, properties and methods should be on an equal footing to their more complex counterparts. In my view, a hierarchy is the wrong ‘shape’ to describe the nature of their relative worth.

Thanks.

John O’

PS. Shouldn’t synthesis (as a noun) come after ‘knowledge’?

Thanks for your comments, which I agree with.

I recently had a debate with someone on LinkedIn.com where they said that starting from a blank piece of paper was a waste of time and money. Given that this is the approach that I have found leads to successful BI, rather than just some nice reports that no one then looks at, I’m glad to see that you see merit in the same approach.

Peter

For more information…
http://purestone.wordpress.com/category/analytics-business-intelligence/actionable-information/

Peter

I’ve been thinking along the same lines as you for awhile now and completely agree with the conceptual point your making. I think Mr.Dawkins made the same point in a different context in 1986.

Data/Information/Knowledge/Wisdom is an evolutionary journey. In many companies data never makes it to the Information level…which is the critical part for Knowledge/Wisdom….and adaptation.

I’m hopeful that in-memory data visualization tools can bring better insight to more people. I’m also excited about the prospects of (64-bit applications/even lower memory costs) in this area and the larger rapid-viz playing fields that will result.

A good point and I have tried to focus on action in this blog (e.g. see “Can You Really Manage What You Measure?” by Neil Raden and some of the articles that it links to). I’m not sure that I would use the D->I->K->W hierarchy in a business context, but it is interesting to see a different perspective.

Peter