The Analytics of Bird Watching

John — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:10:30 +0000

A few months ago I mentioned that the bookHow Doctors Think reminded me of an article I had read discussing analytics involved in bird identification and disease diagnosis. While going through some old files the other day in preparation for an office move, I actually found the original article! It wasn’t published in a birding or nature magazine. It wasn’t published in a medical journal. No, it was published in the August 2002 issue of Harvard Business Review!

The article is a Q&A with birders David Sibley and Julia Yoshida. Sibley is one of the foremost birding experts in the world. (I met him a few years ago and own several of his books.) Yoshida is both a birder and medical doctor. In the article they discuss the importance of pattern recognition to their respective fields and HBR makes the connections to business.

I found a number of insightful concepts in the article — too many to mention in one post. Over the next few weeks, I’ll share a few of them. Here’s a starter:

The ability to grasp complicated phenomena and discern possible trends from seemingly random events can be a source of competitive advantage, allowing managers to capitalize on opportunities before they are apparent to others…To thrive in an information-rich world, executives need to be adept at pattern recognition. They can learn a lot from expert-birdwatchers.

You can purchase the article at the HBR web-site.

Amazon carries the books mentioned in the article including:

Thinking Analytically » How Doctors Think

The Analytics of Bird Watching