Formula 1
I recently sat in a presentation about supercomputing. They showed an application that helps Formula 1 teams prepare visits for the windtunnel and helps to analyze the results. Formula 1 teams need to comply with strict rules and need to find ways to optimize their results within an elaborate set of regulations. The presentation also described how to drive the fastest round. Did you know that Formula 1 cars can drive as fast as 400 km/h, but usually don't go faster than 360 km/h? The reason is that if you go too fast on the straight end, you need to brake more in the curves, and the race is won in taking the curves in the right way. Coincidentally, a few days later I read an interview with a Formula 1 driver. He said that winning is not only in being a good driver, but also in being a good communicator. While test driving, you need to tell the team in the pit and the design crew how the car "feels." I'm just making this up, but telling the crew that it feels a bit "itchy in the left middle of the center-back" must mean something to the crew. This only happens if they are tuned in to each other.
I realized that this is almost the perfection description on competitive advantage in business as well. Every organization has the same access to critical data. The key question is what you do with it. Being a little bit faster in seeing correlations, having just a little deeper insight in what certain patterns mean, being simply a little bit smarter than the others. At the same time, speed is not the differentiating factor, it's agility. You can have the fastest, leanest, meanest business process in the world, you're just not gonna win if you can't quickly translate new insights into how to modify your processes. Lastly, organizations don't stand alone, they interact with their stakeholders all the time and, like a formula 1 driver and the crew, they need to be tuned-in to each other, they need to be aligned.
Being smart, being agile, being aligned are the key competitive differentiators for the years to come. The EPM promise is to enable that.
--frank
