Ventana software support forum

Cyprian Smits commented on the issue of independently generated
forecasts for new telecom services being somewhat less than realistic
when aggregated together.

I would go a little further and say that the entire global high-tech
industry suffers from this delusion. As an illustration I once attended
a conference session where a well known Stanford researcher showed an
aerial photograph of Silicon Valley (about 90 miles of land mass) along
with data on the short term business plans of firms in the region. Their
total forecasts exceeded the GNP of the United States. So much for
marketing enthusiasm.

In Canadas largest telecom company we have not been exempt from this
problem. At least a helpful direction, if not a full solution, has been
the ability to position new service proposals within the context of our
top-down system dynamics model of our industry and business environment.
It provides a reasonableness check and can help to formulate useful
questions about the seemingly contradictory proposals being put forward.
Our top management are getting to like this capability to form an
integrated second opinion.

Bob Walker
From: Bob Walker <rjwalker@sympatico.ca>