How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business, 3rd Edition

How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business, 3rd Edition

by Douglas W. Hubbard
Released March 2014
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9781118539279

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Book description

Now updated with new measurement methods and new examples, How to Measure Anything shows managers how to inform themselves in order to make less risky, more profitable business decisions

This insightful and eloquent book will show you how to measure those things in your own business, government agency or other organization that, until now, you may have considered "immeasurable," including customer satisfaction, organizational flexibility, technology risk, and technology ROI.

  • Adds new measurement methods, showing how they can be applied to a variety of areas such as risk management and customer satisfaction

  • Simplifies overall content while still making the more technical applications available to those readers who want to dig deeper

  • Continues to boldly assert that any perception of "immeasurability" is based on certain popular misconceptions about measurement and measurement methods

  • Shows the common reasoning for calling something immeasurable, and sets out to correct those ideas

  • Offers practical methods for measuring a variety of "intangibles"

  • Provides an online database (www.howtomeasureanything.com) of downloadable, practical examples worked out in detailed spreadsheets

    • Written by recognized expert Douglas Hubbard—creator of Applied Information Economics—How to Measure Anything, Third Edition illustrates how the author has used his approach across various industries and how any problem, no matter how difficult, ill defined, or uncertain can lend itself to measurement using proven methods.

    Table of contents

    1. Preface to the Third Edition
    2. Acknowledgments
    3. About the Author
    4. PART I: The Measurement Solution Exists
      1. CHAPTER 1: The Challenge of Intangibles
        1. The Alleged Intangibles
        2. Yes, I Mean Anything
        3. The Proposal: It’s about Decisions
        4. A “Power Tools” Approach to Measurement
        5. A Guide to the Rest of the Book
      2. CHAPTER 2: An Intuitive Measurement Habit: Eratosthenes, Enrico, and Emily
        1. How an Ancient Greek Measured the Size of Earth
        2. Estimating: Be Like Fermi
        3. Experiments: Not Just for Adults
        4. Notes on What to Learn from Eratosthenes, Enrico, and Emily
        5. Notes
      3. CHAPTER 3: The Illusion of Intangibles: Why Immeasurables Aren’t
        1. The Concept of Measurement
        2. The Object of Measurement
        3. The Methods of Measurement
        4. Economic Objections to Measurement
        5. The Broader Objection to the Usefulness of “Statistics”
        6. Ethical Objections to Measurement
        7. Reversing Old Assumptions
        8. Notes
        9. Note
    5. PART II: Before You Measure
      1. CHAPTER 4: Clarifying the Measurement Problem
        1. Toward a Universal Approach to Measurement
        2. The Unexpected Challenge of Defining a Decision
        3. If You Understand It, You Can Model It
        4. Getting the Language Right: What “Uncertainty” and “Risk” Really Mean
        5. An Example of a Clarified Decision
        6. Notes
        7. Notes
      2. CHAPTER 5: Calibrated Estimates: How Much Do You Know Now?
        1. Calibration Exercise
        2. Calibration Trick: Bet Money (or Even Just Pretend To)
        3. Further Improvements on Calibration
        4. Conceptual Obstacles to Calibration
        5. The Effects of Calibration Training
        6. Notes
        7. Notes
      3. CHAPTER 6: Quantifying Risk through Modeling
        1. How Not to Quantify Risk
        2. Real Risk Analysis: The Monte Carlo
        3. An Example of the Monte Carlo Method and Risk
        4. Tools and Other Resources for Monte Carlo Simulations
        5. The Risk Paradox and the Need for Better Risk Analysis
        6. Notes
      4. CHAPTER 7: Quantifying the Value of Information
        1. The Chance of Being Wrong and the Cost of Being Wrong: Expected Opportunity Loss
        2. The Value of Information for Ranges
        3. Beyond Yes/No: Decisions on a Continuum
        4. The Imperfect World: The Value of Partial Uncertainty Reduction
        5. The Epiphany Equation: How the Value of Information Changes Everything
        6. Summarizing Uncertainty, Risk, and Information Value: The Pre-Measurements
        7. Notes
    6. PART III: Measurement Methods
      1. CHAPTER 8: The Transition: From What to Measure to How to Measure
        1. Tools of Observation: Introduction to the Instrument of Measurement
        2. Decomposition
        3. Secondary Research: Assuming You Weren’t the First to Measure It
        4. The Basic Methods of Observation: If One Doesn’t Work, Try the Next
        5. Measure Just Enough
        6. Consider the Error
        7. Choose and Design the Instrument
        8. Note
      2. CHAPTER 9: Sampling Reality: How Observing Some Things Tells Us about All Things
        1. Building an Intuition for Random Sampling: The Jelly Bean Example
        2. A Little about Little Samples: A Beer Brewer’s Approach
        3. Are Small Samples Really “Statistically Significant”?
        4. When Outliers Matter Most
        5. The Easiest Sample Statistic Ever
        6. A Biased Sample of Sampling Methods
        7. Notes
        8. Notes
      3. CHAPTER 10: Bayes: Adding to What You Know Now
        1. The Basics and Bayes
        2. Using Your Natural Bayesian Instinct
        3. Heterogeneous Benchmarking: A “Brand Damage” Application
        4. Bayesian Inversion for Ranges: An Overview
        5. The Lessons of Bayes
        6. Notes
    7. PART IV: Beyond the Basics
      1. CHAPTER 11: Preference and Attitudes: The Softer Side of Measurement
        1. Observing Opinions, Values, and the Pursuit of Happiness
        2. A Willingness to Pay: Measuring Value via Trade-Offs
        3. Putting It All on the Line: Quantifying Risk Tolerance
        4. Quantifying Subjective Trade-Offs: Dealing with Multiple Conflicting Preferences
        5. Keeping the Big Picture in Mind: Profit Maximization versus Purely Subjective Trade-Offs
        6. Notes
      2. CHAPTER 12: The Ultimate Measurement Instrument: Human Judges
        1. Homo Absurdus: The Weird Reasons behind Our Decisions
        2. Getting Organized: A Performance Evaluation Example
        3. Surprisingly Simple Linear Models
        4. How to Standardize Any Evaluation: Rasch Models
        5. Removing Human Inconsistency: The Lens Model
        6. Panacea or Placebo?: Questionable Methods of Measurement
        7. Comparing the Methods
        8. Example: A Scientist Measures the Performance of a Decision Model
        9. Notes
      3. CHAPTER 13 : New Measurement Instruments for Management
        1. The Twenty-First-Century Tracker: Keeping Tabs with Technology
        2. Prediction Markets: A Dynamic Aggregation of Opinions
        3. Notes
      4. CHAPTER 14: A Universal Measurement Method: Applied Information Economics
        1. Bringing the Pieces Together
        2. Case: The Value of the System That Monitors Your Drinking Water
        3. Case: Forecasting Fuel for the Marine Corps
        4. Case: Measuring the Value of ACORD Standards
        5. Ideas for Getting Started: A Few Final Examples
        6. Summarizing the Philosophy
        7. Notes
      5. APPENDIX: Calibration Tests (and Their Answers)
      6. Index

    Product information

    • Title: How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business, 3rd Edition
    • Author(s): Douglas W. Hubbard
    • Release date: March 2014
    • Publisher(s): Wiley
    • ISBN: 9781118539279