Strategy and Change

4Insight

OUR UNDERSTANDING OF how we gain insight—defined here as the ability to identify new information that changes our understanding of a complex situation—has evolved dramatically over time. Research in the field of cognitive science has altered how we understand the human brain. Psychologists have revised long-held assumptions on how we think. Technology has enhanced our ability to identify trends and their implications. At the same time, our leaders and institutions continue to be caught off guard when faced by any number of once-in-a-generation events or seismic shifts in the behavior of long-standing markets and stakeholders. Even today, as we explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models to produce new insights, we struggle to estimate the implications of these transformational technologies.

This is the dichotomy of our first lens—how actionable insight can at times seem elusive even as technology radically improves our ability to gather and interpret information.

Our Evolving Understanding of Insight

Before we look at the role insight plays in how organizations navigate disruptive change, it's worth spending a bit of time on the way people think and our understanding of the human brain. The topic of how we as humans gain insight has a long and fascinating history. For our purposes it will be useful to look at how our understanding has evolved since the early 1900s.

Contributions from Psychology and Computer Science

The first ...