Knowing Is Half the Battle. Knowing What to Ask Is the Other Half.

This year, the world will create roughly 221 zettabytes of data. That’s over 20% more than last year. At this pace, the total data in existence will double every two to three years.  

Having more data used to be an edge. But when everyone has the same abundance, what separates insight from information overload? More than ever, I think it’s the questions you ask first.  

Consider these two approaches in asking questions:  

“How are our KPIs tracking?” 
and 
“What’s actually driving growth or decline, why has shopper behavior shifted, and which of those shifts are worth acting on?”  

The first question just produces a report.  

The second leads to a decision.  

As analytics get faster and easier, it’s all about asking the question that makes an answer worth having. At Foresight, before we touch a dataset, we ask: 

• What are we trying to achieve? What decision is on the table? 

• What would we do differently if we knew the answer? If nothing, it’s the wrong question. 

• What evidence would change our minds? That’s the data worth finding. 

That discipline lets us deaverage the data. Averages are comfortable, and they’re often misleading. A flat topline can hide one segment surging and another collapsing. The decisions that matter to our clients are made in the details that an average can hide.  

Asahi Europe & International put this into practice. With Curve Analytics, the company combed through more than a billion online searches and 450,000 social posts looking for new growth in the beverage category.  

That much data could have produced a thousand interesting charts and no strategy. Instead, the team anchored the work to two practical questions: 
Where are new consumption occasions emerging? 
What unmet needs or pain points could a new product solve?  

Those two questions turned an ocean of information into a growth framework for developing new product ideas and tracking emerging trends. 

As info becomes a commodity, judgment is more important than ever. The winners will be the ones who know which questions are worth answering, can tell a real signal from noise, and can act on what they find. 

So, as data becomes easier for everyone to access, what will separate strategic insight from information overload? That’s the question I keep coming back to.  

Best,
Hunter