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January 1, 2012

The Adjacent Possible in Business Intelligence

It is that time of the year when everyone has the license to write about 2012 trends in their technology areas of focus. In that context, I was inspired by this wonderful book titled 'Where Good Ideas Come From' written by Steven Johnson. There are many fascinating nuggets in this book but I was completely intrigued by a concept called 'The Adjacent Possible' and would like to take about BI Trends for 2012 from that perspective.

First, let me clarify the concept by quoting sentences from the book itself.

"Start Quote" Scientist Stuart Kauffman coined the phrase 'The Adjacent Possible' to indicate a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself. Yet it is not an infinite space, or a totally open playing field. What the adjacent possible tells us is that at any moment the world is capable of extraordinary change, but only certain changes can happen. The strange and beautiful truth is that its boundaries grow as you explore those boundaries. Each new combination ushers new combinations into the adjacent possible."End Quote"

Steven Johnson goes on to illustrate many examples and concludes that almost all innovations, from pre-historic life to YouTube, are based on 'The Adjacent Possible'.

Coming to Business Intelligence & Analytics, here is my view of the key trends for 2012, or in other words, 'the adjacent possible' for BI, at this juncture. The Mindmap that describes these key trends can be viewed here - BI Trends for 2012 and they are:

1) Smorgasbord of Analytical workloads
2) Self-service BI
3) Social Media Analytics
4) Mobility in BI
5) Big Data
6) BI on the Cloud
7) Advanced Analytics
8) Data Visualization

Though the list is not something that will surprise BI practitioners, each area offers immense scope for innovation. Exploring the adjacent possible in each of these areas is bound to be very interesting and if you get it right can prove to be quite rewarding too. And in the true spirit of innovation, we should let ideas get connected with one another rather than protecting them.

Wish you all a very happy new year 2012. And thanks for reading.

Posted by Karthikeyan Sankaran at January 1, 2012 3:45 AM

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