Interactive version available here.

As explained by Michael:

This display is a perfect example of why we need dashboards in today’s world. Behind this colorful showing of charts and sliders are thousands upon thousands of data points. Spreadsheets are not easy to read – dashboards are.

The entire design philosophy of a dashboard is based on speed.

Consolidating data into a purely visual format allows users to identify trends and make informed decisions far quicker than analyzing numbers.

This dashboard gives a complete overview of a fictional construction agency. It tracks all the metrics related to running that company, using a series of input and output elements.

The selection lists, drop down menu, and calendar allow the user to modify the outputs on the charts. If, for example, a user would like to know how many accidents there were in California between July and August, they can tweak the dashboard appropriately.

Try this dashboard for yourself at this link here or see our professional design tools at http://www.inetsoft.com.

The video show how to set up various widgets and reports that allow drill down examination of the data. Pay particular attention to the Executive Dashboard setup and how the left side displays the marketing funnel statistics (unique pageviews, unique visitors, engaged visitors and RSS subscribers).

Here is the pdf of the full size infographic:

http://www.boostlabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/top-gear-infographic-9.pdf

This excellent panel discussion focuses on what they DON’T teach you about entrepreneurship in business school. This group of successful entrepreneurs reveal what they learned in real life business that they never could have been taught in school. They also discuss what courses were actually most helpful to them and also what courses they wish they took but didn’t.

A strategy map is an extension of the Balanced Scorecard and was created by Kaplan and Norton.

Reasons for using strategy mapping include advantages across several categories. When properly executed, strategy maps:

Create a line of sight between individual efforts and organizational objectives.

Translate strategy to operational terms.

Align people and action.

Help put a value on things traditionally viewed as “hard to measure”.

Here’s a quick look at the overall process of building a balanced scorecard:

The process consists of seven steps over three phases:

• Phase I: The Strategic Foundation
• Step 1: Communicate and align the organization around a clear and concise strategy. This is the fundamental starting point behind everything else. Your strategy is what“feeds” the Balanced Scorecard.
• Step 2: Determine the major strategic areas or scope for getting the organization focused on those things the organization can actually do.
• Step 3: Build a strategic grid for each major strategic area (step 2) of the business. Out of all the steps in the entire process, this can be the most difficult since we must take our entire strategy (step 1) and transform it into specific terms that everyone can understand. And everything must be linked to form one complete strategic model.
• Phase II: Three Critical Components
• Step 4: Establish Measurements: For each strategic objective on each strategic grid, there needs to be at least one measurement. Measurement provides the feedback on whether or not we are meeting our strategic objectives.
• Step 5: Set Targets for each measurement: For each measurement in your scorecard,establish a corresponding target.
• Step 6: Launch Programs: Things will not happen unless the organization undertakes formal programs, initiatives or projects. This effectively closes the loop and links us back to where we started – driving the strategy that was formulated in phase I.
• Phase III: Deployment
• Step 7: Once the Balanced Scorecard has been built, you need to push the entire process into other parts of the organization until you construct a single coherent management system. This pulls everything together, allowing successful execution of your strategy.

And here’s a look at some of the tools in the course:

Sometimes a very straight forward approach in data visualization is all you need. Let’s take a look at this comparison of the cost of having lunch at the best restaurants in Great Britain as ranked by Michelin. Well, maybe all you really need to do is to stack a really big bunch of bar graphs and call it a day!

Read more about this Michelin infographic here: http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/2012/6/4/eat-at-the-best-british-restaurants-for-less-than-you-think.html

This one in particular makes for a good example. You don’t just have the challenge of translation, but all the left to right, right to left parsing issue. It’s almost twice the work!

You can read more about this infographic at this link: http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/2012/6/5/market-and-competitive-intelligence-trends.html

This first one is from CapGemini and it titled “Business Analytics and Big Data: The Battleground for Competitive Advantage”.

And here is one from IBM called Designed for Data. It’s part of their i for Business series.

This one is in a super wide screen format and is also from IBM. It’s called Business Analytics: Turning Data into Insight. It starts off with a very interesting fact: All the data in the world that existed up to 2003, we generated now in two days.

And this pitch for support, training, and consulting services for IBM Business Analytics from Inca.

The first video below is the music video. The one below that is “The Making of Java Rap”.

And here’s a bonus video:

Plus, of course, you know what this is: