Summary of Yves-Michel Marti's presentation to the SCIP Conference 2002 in Cincinnati
Learning Objectives:
Summary:
Modern BI practitioners can learn greatly from past history. In the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth Ist decided that the foundations of English power should be based on "Intelligence and Trade." The Royal Society was then created as a technological intelligence service. The knowledge process has remained the same for 400 years: (1) Define a strategic focus as a set of questions, (2)Send students, explorers or navigators abroad (nicely called "merchants of light"), (3) Analyze the written reports by a committee of experts, (4) Debate in public conferences, and (5) Follow through questions and answers in a scientific journal. The result was centuries of British naval superiority.
Henry the Navigator, brother of the king of Portugal, wanted to make a breach in the monopoly the Arab merchants had on the Chinese silk trade. His ships had to be the first to circle Africa. He created an observatory of shipbuilding and attracted scientists from all over Europe. He enforced an iterative briefing/debriefing process: Have the ship captains precisely report on the difficulties encountered. Have a team of experts propose new technical solutions. Send a new boat and iterate the process. As a result, the Caravelle was the first ship to be able to travel upwind. The Portuguese were the first to open trading posts in India and in Japan.
In the meantime, the Republic of Venice had already invented the manufacturing process today known as "simultaneous engineering" for its galleys. Secrecy was such that the arsenals were built in walled concentric circles where people lived and worked. No outside people could never ever get in physical contact with key technicians. Today, some company Intranets are built on the same architecture. A look at the past can help us be successful practitioners today.