Spotting patterns on the fly

Recognizing and anticipating change in industry patterns is a core competence for companies today, allowing managers to capitalize on opportunities before they are apparent to others. Yet despite the growing realization that recognizing patterns is important, companies are far from mastering how to do it, especially at the strategic level, where information is usually less profuse and much less precise. Pattern recognition is not a new skill, though, at least not to people outside the business world. Since antiquity, naturalists have relied on their ability to spot patterns to make sense of their surroundings. And surprisingly, there is much businesspeople can learn from bird-watching--as removed as it may seem from the fast-paced, bruising world of business--in terms of the cognitive demands pattern recognition requires. To learn more, HBR spoke with David Sibley, perhaps the nation's foremost birdwatcher and illustrator, and Julia Yoshida, a birder since 1965 and a physician at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts. Sibley explains how expert birders draw on a wealth of tacit knowledge built up over the years to make identifications in a matter of seconds: "Once you've mastered common patterns, the real trick is to educate yourself about where discrepancies are most likely to appear--and to concentrate your attention on those areas." Although so fast as to be almost unconscious, the process he describes seems to be as methodical as one of Yoshida's medical diagnoses. "Recognizing a pattern involves knowing what to look for, what the possibilities are, and then sorting out those patterns when you are actually confronted with the patient," Yoshida says. "I don't think it's a eureka moment at all. It's a methodical process."