# What are Insights? By:: *[[Brian Heath]]* 2022-11-09 "Bring me insights" is a common request in business analytics. This is a deceptively difficult question. It's one of those questions that are easy to ask but hard to deliver. Everyone thinks they know what it means until you ask them a simple question in return: what is an insight? If you ask this question, be prepared for blank stares as the wheels turn. Let's take a page from Socrates to see how a conversation about insights may go in business. Stakeholder: "I would like analytics to bring me insights." Analyst: "What is an insight?" Stakeholder: "Hmm. Well, an insight is something that I don't know but could help me do my job better." Analyst: "What do you not know?" Stakeholder: "I'm not sure. I don't know what I don't know. This is why I need insights." Analyst: "Is there a particular area you feel your knowledge might be insufficient?" Stakeholder: "Yes, I feel concerned that I don't understand enough about the customer in terms of what they like or dislike." Analyst: "Ok, I'll conduct a study to see what I can learn about the customers." *...4 weeks later...* Analyst: "... and this summarizes key likes and dislikes of customers." Stakeholder: "Thank you for this work. I certainly learned some things, but I feel that we still haven't uncovered key insights." Analyst: "What insight are you looking for?" Stakeholder: "I'm looking for more confidence that the marketing strategy is going to work." Analyst: "The future is highly uncertain." Stakeholder: "I know, but the results from the study only confirm my suspicions about how the customer behaves with a few new nuances." Analyst: "It sounds like we didn't achieve insights because you already understood and had beliefs in this area. However, the unpredictable future is something that no one knows, and knowledge of the future only occurs after the future has passed." Stakeholder: "Yeah... I still need insights from the analytics team." Analyst: "I'll run some more models and come back. In the meantime, what is an insight?" *...repeat forever...* Helping others find insights is an elusive task. It requires exploring truth, beliefs, and one's place in the universe. A person has to be ready for the question before engaging in it in a meaningful way. If someone asks for insights in a business context, it's [[Pragmatic]] to ask once what insights are and then proceed with a deeper conversation or revert to "number crunching" in the area that you believe is the source of the stakeholder's anxiety. #### Related Items [[Analytics]] [[Philosophy]] [[Thinking]] [[Knowledge]] [[Truth]] [[Business]] [[Analytics-Induced Anxiety]]