Tag Archives: Ernest R May

How to Think like an Intelligence Analyst

To follow up on Philippe’s post about Thinking in Time:  at IE I teach a course called “Geopolitics” to Masters in Advanced Finance students, and “The Multinational Firm and Geostrategy” to Masters in Management students.  Students in those classes sometimes ask me to recommend books to help them “think like an intelligence analyst” and apply intelligence methods to analyzing business decisions.

I provide extensive bibliographies as part of my course syllabi, but often students want me to boil my recommendations down to a few key texts.  Call it a “getting started in intelligence for businesspeople” reading list.

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The use of history for business decision makers: Neustadt and May’s analogs framework

One of the characteristics of a disruption is that one has to deal with a new situation for the first time. Hence, almost by definition, one doesn’t have any prior experience to draw upon, and often no existing framework to use.

Does that mean that radically new situations must be dealt with without referring to the past experience? In their book, “Thinking in time”, Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May think not. They argue that there is always an analog, ie a past situation decision makers can refer to, but on the conditions that the similarities and differences with the present situation be clearly understood.

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