The Challenge of Information Overload & the Opportunity of Abundance

by Charlie Davidson, CEO, Attensa

In Part I of this post, I called out the “Opportunity for Information Professionals in an era of Information Abundance.”  I also explored the many challenges created by the ubiquity of information and why traditional information services and tools struggle to address the problems and opportunities of information abundance. Chiefly, this struggle occurs because current information gathering and delivery tools were designed in and for a paradigm of information scarcity rather than information abundance.

In conjunction with this shift from scarcity to abundance, the role of information professionals is evolving as well. Alexander Feng, director, strategic research at the dd+p group and chairman of the Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Division at SLA, offers a wonderful perspective on this in his essay “Corporate Librarian 2.0: New Core Competencies” (PDF). He observes, “the core role of information specialists is changing from information gatekeeper to information guru.” Feng believes this can empower librarians to become both “information enablers” and “knowledge creators.”

Information professionals are uniquely positioned for this important new role by virtue of understanding myriad information sources and how information maps to organizational objectives. What is missing, however, are the processes and enabling technologies to empower them.

The best part of this evolution is that it does not require radical changes to company processes or worker behavior. The basic notion is to implement a simple framework with four essential elements:

• An aggregation engine that unites digital sources inside and outside the organization.
• An automated way to rapidly capture and organize information into topics relevant to the organization and its people.
• Content delivery options that span offices, geographies, viewing devices and more.
• Analytics that report how information is being consumed to drive content recommendations and purchasing decisions.

These elements are described in the graphic below.

These four elements form the foundation of a solution that is robust enough to deliver on the promise of exploiting the abundance of information available today — and capitalize on the changes to come. These innovations will bring immediate value to your organization by extracting new and untapped value from the information already flowing through it. You can learn more about this here.

A question I often get asked is: “How do information professionals get started sponsoring these needed changes?”

Here is the good news! The business justification for these projects and the ROI are straightforward and provide impact across different roles in the organization. You will find many friends and supporters to help make your business case. In our work with customers across various industries, common interests have emerged between information professionals, knowledge management professionals, marketing and sales operations, CIOs and senior technology professionals.

Effective information management generally goes to the heart of many corporate initiatives and the connections between your initiative and other roles in the organization will be mutually beneficial. For example, knowledge management professionals gain insights into the intellectual assets of the organization and are able to effectively connect people, information and processes. CIOs and technologists harvest greater value from existing technology and communication assets. Marketing and sales operations professionals can grow revenue more effectively and empower better customer relationships.

Of course, the ultimate value accrues when the people across the organization receive more relevant and timely information about the topics that matter to them so they can find prospects, monitor competitors or industries and keep clients satisfied.

Charlie Davidson is the CEO of Attensa, an enterprise software company solving the problem of information overload for businesses and professionals. He serves on the Steering Committee for the Information Overload Research Group and is also a member of the Oregon and Washington State Bar Associations. Charlie can be reached at charlie.davidson@attensa.com on Twitter @CharlieDavidson or  at +1 971.340.2000 ext. 100.

The Challenge of Information Overload & the Opportunity of Abundance

by Charlie Davidson, CEO, Attensa

Information professionals have always played a critical role supporting knowledge workers. Today, that role is more important than ever as future-ready solutions are implemented.

As digital information proliferates, businesses and their knowledge workers are confronted with unprecedented information management challenges. These challenges arise not just from the sheer volume of information, but also the number of sources that produce it and the number of locations or devices where this information is consumed.

As organizations grapple with the consequences, information professionals play a critical leadership role in the solution. There is a massive opportunity to impact personal and organizational performance throughout their organizations.

This post explores the nature of the challenge presented by information overload (and the opportunity of information abundance) and why information professionals must play a leading role in the solution.

It is no small irony that today we have unprecedented access to information and yet it always seems so difficult to maintain awareness of the information that really matters to us and drives organizational performance. Consider the results of a study by Xerox that reported that 53% of the knowledge workers surveyed believe that half of the information they receive is valuable. The study also revealed that organizations believe “that time constraints and lack of understanding of how to find information is preventing their employees from finding the information they need to do their jobs.” This topic is explored in greater detail in the Attensa White Paper: Reducing Information Overload in the Enterprise.

Why is information so poorly targeted? It is easy to lay complete blame on information overload, which is unquestionably a major issue. However, the fundamental issue is our inability to filter and discern the information that matters. In other words, the killer app in the era of information overload will deliver relevance. Information professionals are ideally suited to deliver this to the people they serve.

Today, with the right tools, you can deliver the right information to the right people and build a flexible foundation that is “future ready.”  Implementing these tools and strategies can be done incrementally and is not complex. We find that with many of our customers relatively simple first steps create immediate business benefits.

Why Existing Approaches and Tools Aren’t Working

Before considering solutions, it is worth exploring why existing approaches and information content providers are failing to fully address the problem. One of the fundamental reasons is that current solutions were designed on the premise of information scarcity rather than information abundance. This paradigm shift has been occurring for the past couple of decades, fueled by the digitalization and networking of content and the new communications and publishing tools that have decentralized and democratized publishing. More disruptive change is clearly on the way, as ebooks evolve and content in general is further atomized. This shift not only requires new tools, but a new perspective.

From Managing Sources to Managing the Flow of Information

This shift is perhaps best captured by the authors of The Power of Pull who observe that “Information now flows like water and we must learn to tap into its stream.”  In the era of information abundance, the traditional information supply lanes are blurred.  Unless that fundamental issue is addressed, getting the right information to the right people at the right time is extremely difficult.

By the same token, leveraging the notion of flow with the right tools will enable information professionals to effectively manage and deliver information in new and impactful ways. With the right tools:

• information from different sources inside and outside the organization can be filtered and managed in a unified way;
• simple software-enabled processes can streamline the work of information professionals and simplify the lives of information consumers;
• the information that matters can be delivered to people in appropriate places rather than requiring them to look for it; and
• intelligent software can help people focus their attention on important information and help organizations utilize the knowledge that exists throughout their organizations.

Information professionals can and should be at the epicenter of this shift. It should a fun ride.

In the next post, I will describe how these tools and future ready design principles can be easily integrated with existing systems and information sources. In the meantime, feel free to call contact me with any questions or comments.

Charlie Davidson is the CEO of Attensa, an enterprise software company solving the problem of information overload for businesses and professionals. He serves on the Steering Committee for the Information Overload Research Group and is also a member of the Oregon and Washington State Bar Associations. Charlie’s can be reached at charlie.davidson@attensa.com on Twitter @CharlieDavidson or  at +1 971.340.2000 ext. 100.

by Jamal Cromity, North Carolina Chapter, Information Technology and Leadership & Management Divisions

Being future ready will enable you to adapt to using tools that improve communication and help you develop new work flow paths. When using social media, the path to making successful community connection is not always certain. While you may have a desire to use one or two networking tools consistently, you will hear about another tool that sparks your interest which can also cause feelings associated with “information overload.” With so much information available from a number of directions, it becomes difficult to discern and synthesize people and services.

….Step back, take a deep breath, and be more determined to move forward. Follow these steps:

• Continue to you use the one or two services that work for you
• Through status updates or blog posts, schedule time to post either daily or weekly
• Read and reply to others you follow or are connected with

Your community connections will grow over time.

Here is a tip…

For personal or as an enterprise competitive intelligence site, those using tools such as Facebook and Twitter can consider converting these micro blogs into a newspaper format using Paper.li to help improve the way you discern, synthesize, and share information from the community connections you make.

In the image on the right is a paper I created called, “The Co-Lab Tribune” to help review post sent via links by those I follow.

Jamal Cromity has worked in the information industry for over 15 years. He is currently a UX Specialist for ProQuest Dialog and is Associate Editor for the New Review of Information Networking. Jamal holds an MLS from NCCU , an MBA from NYIT and is PM (Project Management) certified. He has received awards and honors from many associations including ALA, SLA, NCSLA, and NCLA.

Scott Schulman, President, Dow Jones Corporate Markets

A colleague of mine once said of the Internet that “free costs too much.” This was no Neanderthal. On the contrary, he recognized the inherent and significant value of the medium and even much of the content therein. He was referring rather to the time we waste and the opportunities we miss, to the imprecision and outright inaccuracy of a Web that is at once essential and untrustworthy.

The world is waking up to the reality that having all the information in the world just a few keystrokes away isn’t enough. Certainly not for business. To get from data to decision takes more than just information. It requires most of all trusted content along with a reasonable assurance that you’re finding and not just searching.

The free Web is an amazing resource – that is for sure. But not every link is worth following. Not every source on the free Web is reliable. We know that. In a knowledge economy where commerce is driven by ideas, businesses cannot take a haphazard approach to information. They need sources they can trust, that save time, avoid information overload and anticipate their needs. Business needs sources to help improve awareness and efficiency and that curtail risk.

You would have thought that by now we’d have a more nuanced view of the value of Internet content. Today’s prime search engines aren’t designed to minimize the clutter; they’re designed to maximize your clicks because that’s where the money is made.

Then there are the results themselves. They are in large part the reflection of connections. The more links to a given page, the greater weight given the results. The more likely the page is to attract traffic, the more likely it will turn up in your search. Not exactly how you find the needle in the haystack if you’re a businessperson looking for opportunities. Independent research from Outsell indicates that one in three businesses searches fail. That’s zero productivity one third of the time. Why would a competent manager abide such waste? The real costs of inefficient search are probably much higher than just a one-third productivity haircut. Not having the right information at the right time is both cost and risk for business.

What business wouldn’t pay for the right information at the right time? Yet some still set “free” as the price point for awareness and thus their future. The Internet changed a lot of things, and rightly so. One thing it hasn’t changed is the value of quality. It is as essential in business information as ever.  Quality information, presented in effective ways, still has value; and that value is worth paying for.

Scott D. Schulman is president of the Corporate Markets Group of Dow Jones & Company where he leads the innovative business news and information products serving professionals and corporations worldwide. These services are designed to help business professionals better monitor and uncover opportunities in the markets, industries, companies and regions that matter most to them.

Mr. Schulman oversees core brands including Factiva, one of the largest electronic business aggregators and archives in the world, as well as Dow Jones Companies & Executives, Dow Jones Insight, Dow Jones Watchlist, The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition and more. These brands and other Corporate Markets Group services are designed to meet the needs of professionals in consulting and professional services, enterprise and business management; public relations and corporate communications; research and knowledge management; and risk and compliance. Mr. Schulman is currently leading a significant investment and expansion in Factiva as well as Dow Jones’ offerings in risk and compliance and corporate communications.

Introduction (Toni Wilson)

This blog post, from an expert member of the CI Division, speaks to the importance of communicating the results of CI research effectively.  While we’ve been focusing to a large extent on the CI collection process this week, as it helps information professionals and their organizations become and remain ready for the future, communicating the findings from our CI collection efforts appropriately – so it’s absorbed and becomes part of the decision-making process – is absolutely critical.

Competitive intelligence (CI), at its most basic level can be defined as being future ready – or armed with the right information to the make the right decisions.  In this post-post modern, Web 3.0, social media, everything and intensely technology mediated world, information is ubiquitous.  Being “Future Ready” to me means being able to take information and elevate it by taking that information in whatever forms it comes and turning it into actionable intelligence.  Librarians or any information professional’s ability to turn reams of paper (or electronic documents) into a three-second sound byte or a neatly parsed phrase that holds meaning and contains value is the essence of being future ready.  In some respects, being future ready for special librarians engaged in CI is a matter of perspective and semantics.  For example, what the competitive intelligence world calls Early Warning Systems, librarians might call Current Awareness.  To be future ready, it’s time to stop thinking about research questions and to start thinking about business problems and how information-turned-into-CI, with the help of analysis, can help organizations solve their business problems with an eye to the future.

Zena Applebaum is a competitive intelligence professional at Bennett Jones LLP, a Canadian law firm.  She writes articles for industry publications and blogs regularly regarding topics important to the successful practice of CI.  Zena is currently the CI Division’s Vendor Relations Chair.

Introduction (Toni Wilson)

In this article from another of our CI Division experts, we move from understanding how CI makes information professionals and the individuals and organizations they serve future-ready to understanding the future of the practice of competitive intelligence itself.  In other words, as our respective marketplaces continue to change and evolve – prompting us to be prepared with competitive intelligence and insights – so does the practice of CI.  Another way to be future-ready is to embrace and prepare for changes in the way CI is practiced.

As the current chair for the SLA CI Division’s 2011 conference, I am particularly interested in what makes a conference session memorable and important.  One event I attended recently at the SCIP conference, which made an impression, was led by Dr. Craig S. Fleisher, a leading academic, expert and author – Dr. Fleisher delivered his interactive session, CI 2020, to a sold-out crowd.  The result was the collective reasoning of over 100 CI professionals regarding the future of CI.  Following are a few key takeaways:

1. The lines between primary and secondary research are blurring:  They will continue to converge due to the increasing use of social media in CI.  CI professionals may no longer specialize in one or the other in the future.
2. Info-glut, info-toxicity and data overload have us “drinking from an informational fire hose.”  This growing trend will require us all to become better analysts and create more sophisticated analysis.
3. Higher performance standards and certifications will be required.  Better standards for CI professionals to be measured by, as well as trustworthy certifications for CI personnel are a must.
4. The question of supply vs. demand is highly debated.  Forces increasing client demand include globalization and increasing competition.  However, CI professionals are not confident overall that enough educated practitioners can be trained with existing programs.

Dr. Fleisher will be leading a CI 2020 session at the SLA conference this year, entitled CI Unconference.  The results from these interactive sessions are used by Dr. Fleisher as part of a longitudinal analysis of the future of CI.  It’s very exciting that SLA’s members can take advantage of an opportunity to participate in this important, ongoing project, learn from the findings, and apply them to becoming more future-ready professionally.

Claudia Clayton is Managing Director of ViewPoint, a strategy, consulting and research firm established in 1993.  She leads the competitive intelligence activities of ViewPoint on behalf of major U.S. corporations in multiple industries.  Claudia is a committed and hard-working volunteer, primarily serving the members of SLA’s CI Division and the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP).  She won SCIP’s Catalyst Award in 2007 in recognition of her commitment to the CI profession.  Claudia is the CI Division’s 2011 Conference Chair and currently serves as the CID’s Membership Chair as well.

Introduction (Toni Wilson)

There are several themes running through this week’s blog articles from the CI Division experts.  One is that competitive intelligence is inherently forward-looking.  Another is that marketplace insights can be developed by observing and understanding patterns in the information we collect.  Related to the latter is a very important theme – that informational professionals are uniquely qualified to do this, ultimately creating value for the end users, clients and organizations we serve.  In today’s blog, Anna Shallenberger offers practical perspective regarding filtering the facts we gather to provide insights and need-to-know results.

Intelligence – be it regarding competitors, markets or any other area – is inherently forward-looking. And yes – research and content is necessary to feed the intel engine that empowers future-readiness.  Many Info Pros possess untapped skills key to delivering great intel (CI, MI, etc.) services, abilities they may not realize organizations need. The challenges are to apply them effectively and visibly.  YOU have to believe, because in a world where “Perception is reality” – people won’t buy what you’re “selling” without that confidence.

So what are these secret super-hero powers? Is it all about statistical number crunching and PowerPoint presentations? Certainly not, although a certain base proficiency in these areas is preferable. And, of course, our data collection and synthesis skills have value, not to mention our expertise in validating sources. It is the talent to both battle the swollen inflow of inputs AND partner in delivering those targeted Aha’s and So What’s.

It takes an effective balancing act – levering the wealth of information content and methodology our “researcheritis” yields with the right filter – while smartly triangulating the significance of that which has made it through.

Is it the same idea as actionable intelligence? Not precisely. Think of it like a souped-up version of the kid’s “Lite Brite” toy where content is the pegs and you have a big bucket of them in front of you.  The more pegs, the higher the resolution of the image, and the better the insights, right? Again, not exactly.

You don’t need to use every peg. Some should shine brighter (weigh more heavily) than others.  You can arrange them in a variety of designs that make sense in the moment. But the future ready Info Pro sees patterns based on triangulating, drawing on the wealth of otherwise useless trivia rattling around in our mental hard drive.

Yes, our content gathering skills have great value. But let’s consider our content filtering abilities, and how access to all the data we’ve seen in life empowers us! LIS professionals offer a unique ability to TRIANGULATE between all the information and ASSESS meaning.  Internal and external sources – gathered by ourselves or others. Teaming up on the analysis and impact of the intel. Because it’s that piece that makes organization most future ready.

Anna F. Shallenberger is an experienced researcher, educator, author, strategist & consultant, Anna Shallenberger, aka the ClosetLibrarian, was recently recognized in Best of the Business Web.  At SLA 2011 , she is a panelist  for “Integrating with Sales & Marketing to Capture & Deliver Intelligence.”  At the Intelligence Café, Anna will lead a discussion regarding Unique Information Sources & the Deep Web.   She was also a spotlight panelist @ SLA 2010 and served as conference planner for the CI Division.

by Dr. Craig Fleisher, Dean, School of Business and Public Affairs, College of Coastal Georgia, USA

The future for business planners, knowledge managers, and special librarians will require enhanced sense-making ability.  In the past, finding and organizing information was the key to competitive success. Those organizations who found it first had advantages that they could often leverage in the marketplace.  Today, most individuals and organizations have excellent access to data and information; in reality, my research has shown that most organizations have too much of both, and too little of an idea for what to do with it.

Making things worse, much of the collected data and information resides in storage (i.e., data warehouses, networks, spreadsheets, etc.) where it gets stale quickly and cannot serve any viable competitive use. Like milk, information spoils if it isn’t treated and utilized. The half-life of time for acting on competitive information continues to shrink in this day and age and isn’t likely to lengthen anytime soon.

Future ready means that analysts in companies will need to work on the front-end with their data acquisition and information management/knowledge professional colleagues, making sure that what is collected provides the missing pieces to the puzzles that analysts and planners know they need to put together to support decisions. The need to make decisions drives our analysis. Our analysis needs drives our data collection. The rule for future success: Don’t collect data or information for which we do not already have analytic mechanisms in place to use it within. Why buy and store milk if you are not going to drink it?

Dr. Craig Fleisher is a former President of the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals, author of several foundational books in CI and analysis, and was awarded its Meritorious recognition for lifetime contributions to the field.

by Kyle Naff, Wisconsin Chapter, Business & Finance Division

I’ve never been one to put much thought into themes. I understand the point of them, uniting presumably unrelated concepts into one cohesive statement or catchphrase. Yet, sometimes they just seem to stretch a little bit too much. The same could be said about our association’s themes. As an academic librarian, I have often thought that all of the corporate jargon employed in the Alignment Project didn’t apply to my situation, and I know that I wasn’t alone.

However, this year has been different, as President Romaine has directly challenged all of us to take our profession into the next stage of its evolutionary process. As I listened to her remarks on ‘Future Ready’ at the Leadership Summit, she described the past role of the information professional, as curator, guarding the materials in the physical space. This has obviously given way to the information explosion that has occurred, like a fire hydrant being emptied into the street for the masses. The role of the information professional, regardless of setting, is to stand in front of the fire hydrant to ‘save’ the rest from the brunt of the information overload.

That’s when I had the light bulb moment – our role as ‘future ready’ academics is something that we’ve been doing for quite a while: information literacy. Our job of arming students, the future leaders of our society, with the searching and evaluation tools, allows them take on the fire hydrants of information that they’ll encounter in their own careers. [Of course, one would hope that they will know about the information professionals in their organization should they need that safety net.]

Being ‘future ready’ to me means isn’t actually about me. It’s ensuring that I instill the value of credibility, reliability and critical thinking in my students. I would hope that other academic librarians would agree.

Kyle Naff is the Business Reference & Instruction Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He has been involved with SLA since Day 4 of library school and is currently President of the Wisconsin Chapter and Webmaster of the Business & Finance Division. He can be reached at kyle.sla@gmail.com.