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September 17, 2003
Sense-making vs. Categorization
There are a few interesting articles in the newest IBM Systems Journal, especially "The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world". In part, it contrasts pattern-making behaviors with category-making behaviors. It's quite dense, but it might be worth looking at. Interesting example from the paper:
...a group of marines [were] taken to the New York Mercantile Exchange in 1995 to be taught and to play with simulators of the trading environment [against professional traders]. Naturally the traders won each time. But when the traders visited the Marine Corp's base in Quantico and played war games against the marines, they won yet again. What they realized is that the traders were skilled at spotting patterns and intervening to structure those patterns in their favor. The Marines, on the other hand, like most business school graduates, had been trained to collect and analyze data and then make rational decisions. In a dynamic and constantly changing environment, it is possible to pattern unorder but not to assume order.
Posted by Andrew at September 17, 2003 06:14 PM