Web Intelligence Explored in Harvard Business School Case Study

As proud pioneers of web intelligence, we are excited Professor Tom Davenport featured us in a new Harvard Business School case study entitled, “Recorded Future: Analyzing Internet Ideas About What Comes Next.”

HBS business cases are teaching tools, so Professor Davenport lays out a broad context which connects market needs, enabling technology, and business strategy:

“The learning objectives for the Recorded Future case include familiarizing students with the fast-growing ‘big data’ field, and raising some issues about how data from the past can shed light on the future. It’s also focused on some key questions about how to grow an entrepreneurial IT startup.”

In our view, the essence of this case is the opportunity of the web and social media to transform how intelligence supports great business decisions. Research at web scale requires “tools for making humans smarter, not automating the analysis process.” Recorded Future CEO Christopher Ahlberg continues:

“It seems to me we have squeezed all the juice out of the internal information. Maybe it’s time we focused on the whole world of external information… I think the world is moving from historical to predictive.”

The move is on, in spheres of intelligence from defense and national security, to business risk management, to market competition and and industry trend analysis. The web, organized for analysis, gives us new context into our world at unprecedented speed and scale.

You can find the full study at the Harvard Business School publishing website. We look forward to hearing from educators that use this business case in their classrooms!