The UK
philosopher and psychologist, Dr. Dylan Evans, defines risk intelligence
as “a special kind of intelligence for thinking about risk and uncertainty”,
at the core of which is the ability to estimate probabilities accurately. Risk
is often thought of in terms of threats — bad things happening to your
business. Nevertheless that, risk also has a positive side, one that applies to
value creation and risk taking for reward. Hence, business thrives by taking
risks, but falter when risk is managed ineffectively.
A
mankind receives signals of risk from our complex biosensor and biochemical
mechanism and thereafter being transmitted via intricate nexus neural systems
for further interpretation before biological body takes corresponding actions.
A mankind is a learning organism. The ability to interpret incoming signals by ways
of classifying and re-classifying them into complex categorical structures with
embedded meanings is the foundation of building the intelligence of a mankind
to confront risks before him. Although different person displays different
characteristics of risk intelligence, the ability to translate incoming signals
into corresponding actions within a reasonable time period determines the
extent of intelligence and health a person is.
Putting
the characteristics of human intelligence into enterprise strategies and
operations in ever-increasing competitive and fast-moving business environment,
the ability to manage risk is becoming essentially fundamental to business
sustainability, growth and profitability. Unlike mankind, an enterprise does
not possess the characteristics of intelligence by itself without a purposeful
design, development, and deployment of its well-coordinated information
systems. One may argue that his enterprise has deployed wonderful ERP, SCM,
CRM, APS, MES, CMMS, PDM, and the like, but the bottom line is, as far as the
characteristics of intelligence are taken into account, these systems are far
less than adequate to enable addressing the issues arisen from risk
intelligence.
Approximately
two decades ago, University of Toronto embarked a big research project
initiative known as Toronto Virtual Enterprise or TOVE in short.
TOVE project has generated many insights into intelligence elements that an
enterprise must possess in order to operate, compete and thrive. Unlike a
mankind whom intelligence elements are represented by complex biosensor,
biochemical mechanism, intricate nexus neural systems, and capability to
translate into actions, an enterprise’s intelligence elements are constructed
and represented by a comprehensive set of integrated enterprise ontologies.
An
ontology body of knowledge has its philosophical root to Metaphysics, an area
of the thoughts initiated by an ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Metaphysics has been
further developed and being applied in three distinct disciplines, namely, Linguistics, Religion, and Computer
Science. Along its course of evolution, different terminologies with some
variances of application are introduced such as Ontology, Semantics, and
Taxonomy.
As an
information systems practitioner, I am much more interested in how integrated
enterprise ontologies could be applied into the development of enterprise risk
intelligence. We are witnessing the adoption of Business Intelligence (BI) for
the purpose of business analytics has been gaining its big momentum over last
few years. Whether or not the advent of Risk Intelligence would take a quantum
leap in near future is a question of interest.
