Strategic decisions in the Digital Age

The ability to make sound decisions is probably the main requirement that is expected from an executive, in the creation of a strategy or implementation of  the plans. But, in the Digital Age, we need to rethink how to make decisions on such environment. With the currently abundance of data and factors such as hyper competitiveness, permanent revision of business models and the pressure for innovation in increasing speed, it is expected that there will be an important influence of such an environment in decision making. Time, in the Digital Age, is of essence, for example, but there are other factors, of course.

This blog will not venture much into the cognitive or psychological part of how the influence of such new environment occurs. What interests me most is to identify what is happening and what are the challenges in the Digital Age that change (or not) some important marketing and communication practices. From there, my goal is to search for some principles – and learn from them.

Because deciding in the Digital Age is, surely, reviewing beliefs, practices and imagining the future in a way that is not simply a continuation of the past. It is risky in nature because digital technology is only beginning to present its possibilities. Therefore, we have to learn or learn.

The dangers of reductionism in decisions

Reality, as Martin and Smith observe in their Harvard Business Review article on the limits of management as a science, is more complex and we should not think that with more data, algorithms and AI we will always make better decisions. That can be a dangerous reductionism.»Innovators often incorporate scientific discoveries in their creations, but their real genius lies in their ability to imagine products or processes that simply never existed before», they comment. That is, we must find the logic in the uncertainty, and in the same without all the data find solutions, which is, after all, what is expected of an executive. As Martin and Smith also observe, «the data is nothing more than evidence, and it is not always obvious what this evidence refers to. In addition, the absence of data does not invalidate a possibility. If you are talking about new consequences and behaviors, then naturally there is no prior evidence. » The Digital Age is not just bytes, data and algorithms, much less the linear continuity of what science prescribed in the past. It’s much more than that. It is, as it was with other similar revolutions, the effect of new technologies on society in a way that is sometimes disruptive and unpredictable. Therefore, we have to understand it well so we will be to play with fire: all the possibilities that the digital technology opens to us.

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