Decision Intelligence: A Roadmap for Solving the World’s Biggest Challenges

Hosted by Teasha Cable, the Dynamic Decisions Podcast explores how leaders and organizations make better decisions in complex environments. Topics include AI, judgment, digital transformation, and the connection between choices and outcomes.

"The Getting Started with Decision Intelligence course gives you a “DI practice in a box”. A step-by-step, hands-on method that has been proven in hundreds of organizations worldwide.
*We’ll be using ChatGPT / generative AI in live course sessions to supercharge DI"

"Another important emerging technology is dual-enginedecision intelligence. Supported by both operations optimization and machine learning, the dual-engine decision intelligence system enables the dynamic, comprehensive and real-time resource allocation, such as real-time electricity dispatching, optimization of port throughput, assignment of airport stands and improvements in manufacturing processes. As such, the technology can also help businesses enhance operational efficiency." 

"Though it’s the stock response, 'insights' is precisely the wrong way to think about how an advance in AI will create value. In fact, we feel that 'insights' often is code for 'We don’t know what to do with our AI’s predictions.'

A much better answer would be to describe the decisions that the predictions will improve, because AI has value only if it leads to better decision-making."

"In this article, we’ll examine the phenomenon of bounded awareness—when cognitive blinders prevent a person from seeing, seeking, using, or sharing highly relevant, easily accessible, and readily perceivable information during the decision-making process. 'The information that life serves is not necessarily the information that one would order from the menu,' notes Dan Gilbert of Harvard University’s psychology department, 'but like polite dinner guests and other victims of circumstance, people generally seem to accept what is offered rather than banging their flatware and demanding carrots.'...

It’s important to note that bounded awareness differs from information overload, or having to make decisions with too much information and too little time. Even when spared a deluge of information and given sufficient time to make decisions, most individuals still fail to bring the right information into their conscious awareness at the right time."

"Decision intelligence (DI) is at the Innovation Trigger of the Hype Cycle. DI is a practical discipline used to improve decision making by explicitly understanding and engineering how decisions are made, and how outcomes are evaluated, managed and improved via feedback....

There is a need to transparently represent how decisions are being made.

From a pure business perspective, it makes sense to curtail unstructured ad-hoc decisions that are siloed and disjointed, and properly harmonize collective decision outcomes across an entire organization. Software tools are now emerging that will enable organizations to practically implement DI projects and strategies."

"According to Gartner’s AI Hype Cycle report which urges companies to, 'pay early attention to innovations expected to hit mainstream adoption in two to five years, including composite AI, decision intelligence and edge AI.'

Despite the shift to a data-centric approach, AI models still need attention to ensure the outputs continue to help us to take better actions... 

Decision intelligence and edge AI are both expected to reach mainstream adoption in two to five years and have transformational business benefits, according to Gartner. Innovations here include AI engineering, decision intelligence, operational AI systems, ModelOps, AI cloud services, smart robots, natural language processing (NLP), autonomous vehicles, intelligent applications and computer vision."

"In March 2020, the NHS needed to make life-or-death decisions on the back of understanding whether curves were trending up or down. For the first time ever, they connected data flows from across the entire system.

That is a potentially overwhelming amount of data – but, crucially, they weren’t paralysed by this sudden torrent... Why was that?

Well, working alongside the NHS, we applied approaches from a nascent field called decision intelligence. We used this data to build the understanding the NHS needed to make confident decisions about which hospital wards to open or close, and which resources to send where.

Rather than just showing data on current levels of patient demand, we could also show demand for tomorrow or next month, the reasons why demand was changing, how that affected resources such as beds or ventilators, and what actions they could take.

Rather than making decisions on data alone, the NHS made them on an understanding of how and why events were unfolding. The collective results have been widely credited with saving thousands of lives."

"So here’s a question for you: does the software system you’re building help people to 'do', or to think, or both? 

And if it helps them to think, then do you understand how they think today? Do you know what’s natural to them? Are you asking them to learn to think in an entirely different way, just to use your system? Or have you learned – like the great 'doing' software designers of the last century – that it’s your job to start with the user, to meet them where they’re at?"

Author and scientist Dr. Lorien Pratt shares insights on decision intelligence, data democratization, augmented intelligence, and solving global challenges.

"According to study participants, Gurobi enables them to solve problems significantly faster than open-source solvers, other commercial solvers, and spreadsheet-based optimization tools. Specifically, participants reported that Gurobi reaches optimality 10x faster than other commercial solvers."

Artificial intelligence-powered 'decision intelligence' platform provider Tellius Inc. is in expansion mode after closing on a $16 million round of funding today...

Whereas BI tends to focus on answering 'what happened-style questions,' decision intelligence goes beyond that to provide more expansive answers, explaining why something happened and how to proceed, Khanna said. 'Answering the toughest business questions is rarely a linear process or doable via a single form of analytics, such as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive or prescriptive analytics,' the CEO added. 'Tellius blends all analytical modes together, making analytics an agile and seamless experience to drive solid business decisions'...

The offering has won over a number of Fortune 500 companies, with Tellius claiming to have customers in verticals ranging from eCommerce, pharmaceutical, banking, financial services and insurance."

"As the demand for robots increases in various industries, the need for collaborative robots (cobots) is also seemingly rising — basic robots might not be able to effectively complete various tasks for companies that demand collaborative elements without complicated programming to do so.

AvaWatz Inc. is a decision intelligence tech firm that supplies for the growing demand for cobots...

Powerful machine-learning methods combine the capabilities of individual mobile robots into a unified system for collaborative detection, decisioning and action. ARYA is scalable to support a range of indoor and outdoor scenarios.

Cobots can be used in a variety of fields to perform tasks that are too difficult, dangerous or tedious for humans alone. Cobot teams are adaptable and might help solve challenging problems for public- and private-sector customers in industries such as the military, aviation, search and rescue, construction, infrastructure and transportation."

"As every company strives to become data-driven, decision intelligence has emerged as one of the most strategic technology imperatives today. And for good reason. Today there’s more data than ever before, and decision-making is becoming more challenging. Decision intelligence democratizes AI-enabled analytics and enables anyone within an organization to make better decisions faster and more consistently...

The underlying problem with traditional analytics is that it is inaccessible to the users responsible for making business decisions. Traditionally, the skills and knowledge needed to build, manipulate, and report the relevant data often have been more aligned with tech and development personnel—not business leaders and strategists. Decision intelligence changes that, in Gartner’s words, by facilitating 'a wide range of decision making' through advanced AI and 'adapted system applications.'"

"Decision intelligence platforms will redefine the way we think, work and build products. The way many companies do business tends to be tedious and unpredictable. I believe there is a way to have better support in decision making, which eventually will lead to predictive outcomes."

"satellite data alone are not sufficient, and the
use of data to drive insight and action remains
inadequate. Gaps in modelling, mitigation and
coordination are still struggling points.

In the United States, for example, no single
organization can provide the US president with
reliable insight into the complete system of emissions
and mitigation, and reliably model where to shift
the system to drive better outcomes."

“Decision intelligence can enable decision makers across the company to measure, quantify, and predict risk with this data to create a consistent methodology steeped in data-driven insights. The technology can place advanced insights into the hands of analysts and business users—helping accelerate formative decision making across the entire organization and eliminating silos between data and sales departments.

For example, a top 10 financial services firm used decision intelligence to improve credit risk analysis. The enhanced analytics capabilities streamlined to a single tool--versus the several solutions the company previously deployed--made it easier for their business and data teams to better collaborate, generate and test hypotheses, and put those into action. The result was thousands of hours of productivity gains, as well as $700,000 saved per month in mitigated losses in just one credit department.”

"Create a decision intelligence excellence team, with key stakeholders from every department by agreeing on a consensus for the current state and advocating for a new operating model revolving around data and AI.

Bring clarity on how you are going to measure the success of your decisions by focusing on clear outcomes with meaningful impact. Build an implementation roadmap by highlighting the highest impact decisions followed up with a phased implementation plan.

Top management is an important driver that has to ensure various business cases align with day-to-day activities..."

"Beyond decision making, the Decision Intelligence Platforms allow to work in what-if mode. The idea is to change the parameters generating the scenarios, to change the set of constraints to be respected as well as the objectives to be optimized.

By controlling this scenario generation at a very high level, it becomes possible to analyze potential futures, and to draw the most profitable one for a company."

Excerpt translated by www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

“Effective decision making is more important than ever. 65% of executives have to make more complex decisions today than they did two years ago, according to a Gartner study, and 50% of them experience greater pressure to justify the decisions they make.…

To put some context, the term ‘decision intelligence’ was popularized in Lorien Pratt’s 2019 book, Link: how Decision Intelligence Connects Data, Actions, and Outcomes for a Better World...

According to McKinsey’s findings, 72% of executives say that bad decisions are as frequent as good ones, and the average S&P 500 company wastes an average of $250 million a year due to ineffective decision making.”

"The DI SSTM is tasked with turning data into better actions at scale for decision advantages across all naval missions from the battlespace to the board room and applied data and artificial intelligence (AI) efforts ensuring U.S. competitive advantage with data and AI teams and technologies. The DI SSTM is leading the effort to revolutionize Naval decision-making through the rapid delivery of disruptive analytics-driven, data-informed, and technology-empowered capabilities centered on the cognitive overmatch capabilities of a human-machine team. Recognizing the importance of data/AI in the future naval force, through the innovative work being done NIWC Atlantic has earned recognition as the Navy leader in building the right data/AI capabilities for the Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Navy (DoN)."

“Decision intelligence is becoming key to the ability of companies to deal with an unprecedented volume of data that’s necessary to making supply chain decisions today, says Fred Laluyaux, president and chief executive officer of Aera Technology.

…Decision intelligence augments current processes, but it also enables analyses that weren’t possible to conduct before, given the complexity of modern-day global supply chains and limitations on human capability.

…The technology doesn’t cut humans out of the decision-making loop altogether. “We advocate going from a world of people making decisions to having machines make the decisions, guided by the people,” Laluyaux says. Humans are still essential to the process, but they’re augmented by processing power that previously was beyond their reach.”

“At QuantumBlack, we unlock the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to help organizations reinvent themselves from the ground up—and accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth.

We do this by harnessing the foresight and precision of data and technology with the creativity and understanding of people. The result? Hybrid intelligence, a source of competitive advantage that transforms how companies think, operate, and disrupt.

…When technology and people work together, we can see further—and deliver lasting impact that shapes our future.”