Data Mining, a hi-tech buzzword for many years, is about excavating useful patterns which are hidden deep in your data to give you valuable insights you could not otherwise find. I was looking for a data mining tool in the same broad price bracket as Excel but which was also robust and did not require you to be a mathematics genius to use it. Surprisingly I managed to find a product which exactly met my needs!

Here is an excellent web link plus two great books which address the question which diagram or chart should I use to best communicate different types of information visually. With at least 40 types of diagram and new ones/variants constantly being invented this is a hot topic!

One of the most useful aspects of Microsoft Excel is its ability to quickly slice and dice customer data from live systems to identify important trends and behaviors which can inform strategy. In this article and screencast I share a 7-step plan, illustrated with a worked example, for Instant Customer Analytics using Excel.

Building Community and Computer Simulation are two of my hot topics. So it really grabbed my attention when Channel 4 Education announced a forthcoming game, Fallen City, to let us explore how our cities might be mended by empowering communities.

In an excellent article in The Observer, Keith Stuart argues that the reason video games are so popular is not because we are simply escaping reality but because the best of these games provide us with valuable experiences in learning, autonomy, authority, feedback and risk-taking. This argument also resonates with a book I am reading "Reality is Broken" by Jane McGonigal.

I have been thinking for a long time about developing an online game for High-Performing Teams which was complex enough to be useful but simple enough to be usable! I am pleased to introduce the A4 Team Game (Alignment, Attitudes, Attention and Autonomy) which can be configured for different team challenges and runs on the desktop, the web or even embedded in other applications.

One of the challenges for teams is that the achievement of some of their goals are not fully under their own control - they need to be achieved in partnership with, or even in spite of, external parties (stakeholders) who are working to their own agendas and priorities. The Stakeholder Collaboration Game allows teams to simulate increasingly complex scenarios involving multiple goals and multiple stakeholders.

I wrote an article on the use of simulation technology in the field of "Sales Performance Optimization" for The Effective Executive Magazine for the May 2011 edition. They have very kindly allowed me to offer a free PDF download of the paper to bioteams.com readers.

A serial bank robber was once asked why he robbed banks? He replied "because that's where the money is!" Why have I developed a new discipline called Process Physics? Same answer - because that's where the money is (in a process). "Process Physics" is the discipline of using mathematical process models in conjunction with simulation technology to spot the "money left on the table" in any business processes . My new screencast provides a short hands-on introduction.

Sometimes the most obvious business process improvements are totally overlooked and the 'no-brainer' process improvements we confidently implement only make things worse. In today's challenging economic climate understanding the hidden physics of your enterprise's business processes could be the trick which delivers timely and significant performance improvement in your key revenue generation processes.

The huge interest in Serious Games, where gaming technology is used for serious or business purposes, has made it feasible for far-sighted organizations to gain enduring competitive advantage by creating their own business simulation labs to regularly present their senior teams with possible future business scenarios to improve decision-making and to allow the big mistakes to happen in the simulator and not in the business. My new white paper explains how.

Why cant we have an Excel-like tool for business simulation? After developing many bespoke business simulations a thought suddenly entered my head: why can't we have something which is to business simulation what a spreadsheet is to financial modelling? Just imagine a tool which let a user, who understands a business area but has no technical skills, build and deploy sophisticated graphical management simulations in under an hour!

I have been intrigued with a new iphone app called RoamBi ("roaming business intelligence") which allows the creation of "secure mobile dashboards and visualizations" on iphones and ipads for individuals (free) and enterprises (not free) using data from excel plus other data-rich enterprise applications such as Business objects and Salesforce.com.

Three new types of graphing/charting object - sparklines, bullet charts and heat maps used in conjunction with a powerful new technique known as micro-charting, which allows complete mini charts to be embedded in single cells, can transform online dashboards, business scorecards, and what-if simulations. Here is a simple introduction.

One of the most powerful team exercises is to explore team leaders and team members "mental models" of teams, networks and groups. Mental models are the, often invisible, dictators of what actually happens in a team as opposed to what team leaders would like to happen. Here are some practical techniques for uncovering these "icebergs of the mind" before they sink your teams.

I am sharing my set of powerful web-based interactive business simulations with their real-time graphs, dashboards, sliders, guages and avatars. I developed these over a number of years using the excellent ithink simulation environment as essential tools to support what-if analysis, management learning games, experiential learning, balanced business scorecards and scenario planning.

One of the biggest challenges for any Enterprise today is Social Media Optimisation, defined as "a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites." The Social Media Optimization Simulator Game lets you instantly 'what-if' the effects of different social media activities (blogging, tweeting etc) on your enterprise.

I believe that products like Second Life could provide powerful immersive platforms to link together web applications (eg via web services) in much more engaging ways for various collaborative group applications such as team games and business simulations.

The Discipline of Market Leaders (TDML) by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema (1997) equips the leadership of an enterprise with a choice of 3 strategies for competing in the marketplace - Customer Intimacy, Operational Excellence or Product Leadership. TDML says you must excel in one of these AND maintain minimum thresholds for the other two. Here is a little web-based management simulation which lets you to test TDML strategies virtually before betting your business on them!

A few years back I developed a simulation to expose key dilemmas in the incubation stage of Virtual Enterprise Networks. I used a powerful simulation-building tool called ithink from Isee, the newest version of which now allows deployment of simulations over the web. So I just republished the VEN simulation for free on www.bioteams.com.