In a world awash with information, the skill of the decision maker is not just based on making the right analysis and deriving the correct conclusions. Prior to that, you need to find the best way of distilling the torrent of source material down to the essence, to give you the basis upon which to perform your analysis and develop your strategy.
The idea of synthesis as a core skill in the digital age is not a new one, and David Armano had an excellent post on synthesizers last summer.
However, Yale’s assertion that these days part of the case studies should involve the synthesis stage itself is an interesting validation from an elite b-school of what many of us working client or agency side would agree with.
If you plan on analyzing any competitive space, getting your head around a consumer or market, or identifying opportunities in a market place for a brand, one of the hardest tasks is sifting through all the information and being able to process it into a crystallized output which forms a solid basis for all the ideation to come.
In addition, if you are able to do that more quickly and accurate than the next guy, that puts you at a distinct competitive advantage. Your speed puts you in front, and the volume you’ve processed makes your conclusions more accurate, your insights sharper and your ideas more fully formed. And it means that you’re less likely to spend six months developing something before you realize you were missing a key piece of the puzzle.
Grant McCracken rightly points out that Yale are not exactly without vested interests in having the format of the case study changed away from the HBS standard, but it’s still a clear sign of the times.
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