Metadata
- Author: Collin Prather
- Full Title:: The Fallacy of Data-Driven Strategy
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- Document Tags:: Data culture,
- URL:: https://locallyoptimistic.com/post/the-fallacy-of-data-driven-strategy/
- Read date:: 2025-03-23
Highlights
Richard Rumelt argues that a good strategy begins with an insight which reframes your situation and surfaces new sources of strength. (View Highlight)
Rumelt, however, represents an insight as the sort of realization that, by definition, is not the result of some predictable process and cannot be deduced from an existing base of knowledge. (View Highlight)
Identifying a true business insight is less about solving for x and more about proving new theorems from scratch. (View Highlight)
An analyst can quickly identify which web page has the best conversion rate, but there is no query that can determine whether overhauling the pricing model will produce more revenue in 3 years time. This is why Tristan Handy writes about how committing to rigid experimentation can be a poor approach for companies that haven’t yet found their product-market-fit. Experiments may help find a local optimum, while what they really need is a “global improvement that’s worth optimizing in the first place.” (View Highlight)
Andrew Gelman and Guido Imbens helpfully point out that most statistical frameworks enable us to estimate the effects of causes, while many real-world situations instead call for us to find the causes of effects. (View Highlight)