Post modern information systems

This is not the first time I find interesting materials in Michael Schrage blog, from MIT. His recent post "Invest in Digital Marketing to Control Your Destiny" (here) has very challenging material about last US elections (for president) and the role of innovative and integrated IT analytics and procedures, a case that he sees as inspiring for all business operations: 

• The Obama campaign's techniques, tools and technologies deserve detailed and dedicated attention from every organization that takes data-driven decisions seriously
• As campaigner-in-chief, however, this President is demonstrably without peer. His "Obama for America" fundraising, analytics and "get out the vote" operation was a masterpiece of agile electoral innovation and entrepreneurship. Partisans from both sides of the aisle believe it transformed presidential politics.

Schrage links to a presentation (Inside the Cave, by engagedc.com):

• Until the actual "Obama for America" codebase is freely available (and this is the subject of intense debate), if you want a blueprint, map or resource for your own organization's digital marketing aspirations, read, reread and then circulate Inside the Cave. It will provoke the internal conversation and debate your business likely needs.

Obama digital operation was a typical results oriented mission with limited time duration. Schrage comments that it is ironic that "top-tier politics has now become more innovative than top-tier business with these media & analytics",  in a reply to a previous comment (by Doris Clark):

• politics is the best testing ground for new strategies that can be applied to business. The singular focus on achieving a clear goal on a specific date (i.e., winning the election) provides very clear evidence of whether or not a given technique works.

Marketing data is basically exogenous to the organization. For a long time collecting marketing data has been an expensive nightmare, and its integration in business information systems - largely based on data endogenous to the organization - has been even more difficult. "Inside the Cave" gives a fascinating insight in the integration of data collected from external sources now available in (near) real time and its use for decision making ("intelligent use of data to drive strategy). I would call it a "post modern" information system, post-PC and based on social networks. 

Behind the technical issues of integration of multiple post-PC devices and sources of data, "Inside the Cave" is basically about management of real time searching and adapting for the right tactics and evolving strategy: see the crucial points about disaster planning and "sensing and changing" (A/B testing, ...):

• "We basically found our guts were worthless," ... nobody on the team could reliably predict which emails would perform best. The campaign committed itself to a relentless regimen of experimentation, test and test again

Did Obama won because he had the best digital team and strategy? Probably not: the final gap was too significant and large. But it is clear it made a significant contribution for the final gap. If elections were decided by web traffic, Obama would have been a clear winner:

Meanwhile, have a look at "Inside the Cave"! Future in the making ...

(Italics, our responsability).