What's New? 01 July 2016
Overview: We are delighted to announce more ST developments that includes an extended Dashboard offering Sentiment Analysis, automated trend Drivers and a Scenario Tool linked to collaborative Options analysis.
The Export capability can now be found under Tools.
Insights: We have continued developing our strategy to demote Insights and make Forecasts our prime service as follows:
Here is the philosophy behind the changes we are making:
Wikipedia definition: “The DIKW Pyramid refers loosely to a class of models for representing purported structural and/or functional relationships between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom.”
Our content can be considered as follow:
Insights = evidence [data] leading to:
Forecasts = predictions [information] leading to:
Centre Dashboard = aggregation [knowledge] leading to:
TBA - wisdom?
So we are taking increasing steps to move higher up the DIKW pyramid by making the Centre Dashboard our entry into ST with Forecasts being the first thing you see and Insights being available if you need to go deeper into the evidence. We are most of the way there now with just a few tidy ups to resolve after this release which still give easy access to Insights but major first on Forecasts.
To now see All Insights click All Forecasts on the Front Page or in the Data pages LH Navigation bar. That will then show the associated All Insights as evidence rather than be a service in its own right among the top centre buttons. The same process is in place when searching too. Basically the centre top buttons on each data page now become the interest topics dashboard so that everything we know about it is available in one place - timeline, questions, drivers, insights etc. A secondary benefit is that there are again less buttons on the site and a more intuitive process all round.
At the same time we are beginning the very complex issue of how to move from aggregated [knowledge] to machine generated real [wisdom] through various background initiatives. The object is to make yours and our clients life easier, your research faster and richer as always and give you more strategic thinking time.
Sentiment Analysis: Members can now compare month-to-month positive and negative sentiments on any topic. Learn More
Drivers: View the underlying themes within a topic from keywords and extracted terms powered by Intellexer.
Clicking on an extracted term tem will display the associated forecasts supporting that driver.
Auto scenarios and Options Analysis: This unique new functionality gives members the capability to create instant scenarios linked to collaborative options analysis. Members can now produce full strategic foresight exercises in just 1 day rather than the weeks and months of traditional methods thus cutting out considerable production time and cost. These projects can now also be facilitated virtually or face-to-face thus further cutting overhead cost.
Viewpoint survey: We’ve promoted our highly successful Viewpoint survey to the front page to determine the current opinions of our member on any future topic.
Clients can now continuously ascertain the views of their stakeholders in real-time.
Simplifying the Service: We have been demoting Insights data (evidence) and increasingly promoting forecasts (information) and summaries (knowledge) for the past year. Now we have gone one step further and made Insights one level down in the extended Dashboard rather than continue to provide direct access from the left-hand navigation bar. Nothing has been lost with this decision but members can now search a forecast topic and obtain all needs directly from the Dashboard. Insights News, Tags, Reports and Contributors can now be found under the Sources button in the left-hand navigation bar.
See the Drivers’ image above.
We have also removed Plan and Act from the left-hand navigation bar as being underused at such a high-level. Plan and Act is still available, as it always has been, directly from the centre panel.
Duplicate email items: We have put in place a mechanism to prevent duplicate items appearing in the emails i.e. if the item appeared in a previous week, it shouldn't be repeated in a later email. We apologise for that oversight and thank those who pointed this out.
Happy futuring
The Shaping Tomorrow team