How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of 'Intangibles' in Business Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B005O5JR4G | Format: PDF
How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of 'Intangibles' in Business Description
Anything can be measured. This bold assertion is the key to solving many problems in business and life in general. The myth that certain things can't be measured is a significant drain on our nation's economy, public welfare, the environment, and even national security. In fact, the chances are good that some part of your life or your professional responsibilities is greatly harmed by a lack of measurement---by you, your firm, or even your government.
Building up from simple concepts to illustrate the hands-on yet intuitively easy application of advanced statistical techniques, How to Measure Anything reveals the power of measurement in our understanding of business and the world at large. This insightful and engaging book shows you how to measure those things in your business that until now you may have considered "immeasurable," including technology ROI, organizational flexibility, customer satisfaction, and technology risk. Offering examples that will get you to attempt measurements---even when it seems impossible---this book provides you with the substantive steps for measuring anything, especially uncertainty and risk. Don't wait---listen to this book and find out:
- The three reasons why things may seem immeasurable but are not
- Inspirational examples of where seemingly impossible measurements were resolved with surprisingly simple methods
- How computing the value of information will show that you probably have been measuring all the wrong things
- How not to measure risk
- Methods for measuring "soft" things like happiness, satisfaction, quality, and more
- How to fine-tune human judges to be powerful, calibrated measurement instruments
- How you can use the Internet as an instrument of measurement
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 12 hours and 40 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Tantor Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: September 20, 2011
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B005O5JR4G
Some things are easy to measure. Time, money, exercise, calories, location - all of these are relatively straightforward to repeatably determine or calculate.
But how does one go about measuring happiness? What about compassion, or public influence, or creativity? These are more intangible, harder to pin down to a number that means anything.
Douglas Hubbard has written an impressive work called "How To Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business."
While it's written primarily for business people, the lessons transfer smoothly to self-experimenters. Hubbard begins with a compelling case for why to measure intangibles:
"Often, an important decision requires better knowledge of the alleged intangible, but when a [person] believes something to be immeasurable, attempts to measure it will not even be considered.
As a result, decisions are less informed than they could be. The chance of error increases. Resources are misallocated, good ideas are rejected, and bad ideas are accepted. Money is wasted. In some cases life and health are put in jeopardy. The belief that some things--even very important things--might be impossible to measure is sand in the gears of the entire economy.
Any important decision maker could benefit from learning that anything they really need to know is measurable."
He goes on to explain in detail how to measure intangibles, including sections on how to clarify problems, calibrate estimates, measure risk, sample reality, and use Bayesian statistics to add to available knowledge. He also describes his Applied Information Economics (AIE) Approach that ties together several threads of his ideas:
"The AIE approach addresses four things:
1.
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