Wisdom as a competitive advantage

Marketing is all about gaining a competitive advantage, and the use of data is a major tool in that effort. With that said, let me get theoretical for a minute (hang in there—I’ll get back to the competitive advantage part soon).

I lunched the other day with a friend who used to be a reporter on the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper. Our discussion eventually turned to the shallowness of modern reporting. We agreed that it is increasingly rare for reporters to provide any perspective on the news. They seem content to communicate what happened, without mention of the how or why. Meanwhile, newspaper readership (and television viewership and radio listenership) are in sharp decline. Coincidence? We thought not!

Data, or raw facts, is the commonest thing in the world. We are awash in it. So much so, that we are willing to pay to have it organized. Just as flour is worth more than wheat, and cookies are worth more than flour, so data gains in value as it is processed.

When data is organized, it becomes information. We pay authors to organize data into books, and teachers to organize data into lessons. When information is put to use, it becomes knowledge. Anyone can buy an engineering textbook, but we pay an engineer because their knowledge helps them put that information to use more efficiently than we can. And while many people gain knowledge, we will pay a premium to the person that can use that knowledge better than most people.

DATA—raw facts

INFORMATION—organized data

KNOWLEDGE—information put to use

WISDOM—knowledge applied to gain an advantage.

For example, the entire body of data about law and medicine is available on the internet for free. Organized in law books or medical texts, this data becomes information. There are many knowledgeable lawyers and doctors who put this information to everyday use. And when knowledge is manipulated by a particularly creative trial lawyer or diagnostician, it can become wisdom.

OK, back to marketing. Prospects and customers are looking for wisdom. They don’t have time to process all the available data affecting all the areas of their lives themselves, so they look for products and companies that can help them. It is easy to organize data into information, so lots of companies do that (but cannot charge much of a premium for the service). It’s harder to turn information into knowledge, so there are less companies (some of them are called colleges and universities) doing that, and they can charge more for the service. It is hardest to turn knowledge into wisdom, and so wisdom commands the highest price.

So the question you should be asking yourself is, “How do I build more wisdom into my products or services?” Because that is the way you will gain more customers and sell them more at a higher price. And isn’t that what a competitive advantage does?