Peter Kruse Has Developed a Tool to Tap into the Intuitive Beliefs that Drive Social Change

This interesting article comes from Think Quarterly - a periodic (quarterly, it seems) book project by Google for its partners and advertisers. This first issue, or Book #1, is called Think Data - and it has an interesting assortment of articles.

Like most companies, Google regularly communicates with our business customers via email newsletters, updates on our official blogs, and printed materials.

On this occasion, we've sent a short book about data, called Think Quarterly, to a small number of our UK partners and advertisers. You're now on the companion website, thinkquarterly.co.uk (also available at m.thinkquarterly.co.uk, if you're on the move).

We're flattered by the positive reaction but have no plans to start selling copies! Although Think Quarterly remains firmly aimed at Google's partners and advertisers, if you're interested in the subject of data then please feel free to read on...

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In addition to this piece by Peter Kruse, there is also an interesting article by Hans Rosling: A Data State of Mind.

Soft Values, Hard Facts

Peter Kruse has developed a tool that can tap into the intuitive beliefs that drive social change. By accessing the parts other data can’t reach, it offers you the most valuable insight of all: what’s coming next.

Words by Ulrike Reinhard
Photography by Jonnek Jonnekson

Professor Peter Kruse is the founder and CEO of nextpractice, based in Bremen, Germany. Alongside a team of psychologists, economists, sociologists, computer scientists and designers, he develops customised management tools to support entrepreneurial decision-making and empower collective intelligence. Using the ‘nextexpertizer’ tool, Kruse is able to access the collective intuition of groups, revealing the hidden value patterns underpinning social change. The data that emerges enables us to answer the question: what’s next?

We produce so much data every day that it is becoming difficult to generate genuine insights. How can we use these data streams more efficiently?

The biggest challenge is to reduce complexity by detecting meaningful patterns. Otherwise the risk of sudden and dangerous breakdowns – like the financial crisis we’ve just recovered from – is far too high.

So the question is how to get the right data. Using customers, citizens and other experts as detectors for relevant information maximises complexity reduction in data analysis. This is where the nextexpertizer method comes in.

The mantra of nextpractice is ‘A Matter of Fact in a World of Values’. What does this mean?

In established methods of collecting data, like standardised questionnaires and predefined scales, people give their judgments on the basis of hopefully intelligent questions and simple categories like ‘yes’ and ‘no’, multiple choice, ranking, etc. The respondent can only add value when the intentions of the interviewer are decoded correctly.

But language is a very tricky phenomenon, so the first difficulty to be tackled is the problem of semantics, which adds a lot of noise to every measurement. The second problem is a direct consequence of the first. Interpretation of language is a mainly conscious process that isn’t well connected with a person’s intuitive knowledge and unconscious valuations, which are crucial for complexity reduction.

Read the whole article.

Tags: Peter Kruse, Tool, Intuitive Beliefs, Social Change, Think Data, Think Quarterly, Google, UK, Ulrike Reinhard, nextpractice, nextexpertizer, data, social change, worldviews, change, management, psychologists, economists, sociologists, computer scientists, designers, meaningful patterns, values, language