In my business, I use two sayings ad infinitum (or our employees probably say ad nauseum): 'don't let the tail wag the dog' (more on that in another essay) and 'Plan by the 80/20 rule.' The report referenced by the NYTimes below indicates that, though we have a vast number of sources of news online, most of us just stick with 5 or less sites. They compare this to cable where, again though we have hundreds of channels we stick with a relative few (for me, the major networks + comedy central + espn). This 80/20 (Pareto) rule lives in everything we do. At our company, we try to plan by this rule. We try to use it in product planning (what 20% of the features will users use 80% of the time); we use it in problem solving (typically a small percentage o problems cause 80% of the issues seen by users), etc. We use it in marketing and sales too. The reason it is so important is often times we get lost in the various data available today. Also, engineers (me being one) often think the most complex problem is the most important one to solve. If you can break down the data to show you the most important items to work on, you can prioritize, make a better product and respond to customers better / faster. Now isn't that an engineer's (and CEO's) dream? From The New York Times: Most Online News Readers Use 5 Sites or Fewer, Study Says Only 35 percent have a favorite site and 21 percent rely primarily on a single source, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. http://s.nyt.com/u/2Eq
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