How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business, Second Edition

Chapter 13. New Measurement Instruments for Management

Iwonder what minds like Eratosthenes, Enrico, and Emily might have been able to measure if they only had used some of the measurement instruments mentioned in this book. No doubt, a lot. But, unfortunately, these instruments are not nearly as widely utilized as they could be, and big, risky decisions have probably suffered because of it.

Again, when I talk about measurement instruments, I'm not just talking about tabletop devices used in some scientific observation. I'm talking about things you are already aware of but may not have considered as types of measurement instruments. This includes some new wireless devices and even the entire Internet.

The Twenty-First-Century Tracker: Keeping Tabs with Technology

One of the methods of observation we discussed was using instrumentation to track a phenomenon that, up until that point, was not being tracked. By inserting something into the phenomenon itself, you make it easier to observe. To measure the motion of the upper atmosphere, my father, as an employee of the National Weather Service, would release balloons into the wind carrying a radio transponder and basic meteorological measurement devices. In the fish population example we discussed, the much simpler tag is introduced into the population so that its size could be measured with the catch and recatch method. If something is difficult to observe as it is, there are multiple ways to insert tags, probes, or tracers into the process. ...