The Art of Finding Powerful Answers – applying information chain management in R&D

Introduction

Today, mastering a decision-making process means mastering a million pieces of information. This represents a challenge in the art of asking questions and finding answers in this huge jungle of information flows. Information Chain Management (ICM), originally developed for the defence and intelligence industry, is the discipline and technology that delivers the solution to this intricate problem in a cost efficient way.

Summary

The overwhelming availability of information has begun to measurably affect manager vulnerability. Information is the strategic resource in the lifeline of decision-making. Recent studies proove that managers tend more and more to outsource part of the decision-making processes to expensive strategic consultant firms. On the other hand, strategic consulting firms spend more than 80% of their costly time on the manual processing of information and only 20% on thinking!

Why do you not spend high daily rates only for the 20% thinking? With ICM you can!

ICM is comparable to the oil industry’s value chain whereas the material handled is information. It’s a method to explore strategic information sources for specific business problems as well as to refine information so that it can be down-streamed to manager’s personal information needs. ICM provides a sophisticated solution to filter useful information out of the noise and to identify information that is reliable, verifiable and actionable. ICM organizes and provides easy and efficient access to relevant information. In addition, ICM massively leads to cost-efficient exploitation of information, i.e., cost reduction in purchasing and in manual labour.

Why ICM? Because to:

-Support strategic decisions
-Detect threats and risks
-Identify trends in image and reputation
-Monitor activities of competitors
-Accelerate market research
-Accelerate research of historical information