With recurring regularity, companies go through the ritual of asking the management team to come up with the next big thing (a.k.a. “The Next Generation”). These very words are used to conjure up the idea that by applying the same thought process to improve an existing business need that they will discover a superior approach that will resolve all of the deficiencies of the predecessor.  At best you come up with some refinements, but nothing so radically different that it changes the trajectory of the business.

To truly innovate and come up with something that is meaningfully different, something that will have an unimaginable business impact requires those involved to embrace something called Unconventional Thinking. It’s not new, but it is rarely, if ever correctly used. To think unconventionally, you must start by stitching together two seemly, ordinary words – what and if.


Armed with these two simple words in the form of “What if”, you are ready to embark on your journey of discovering the unconventional. Just for a moment, imagine how your business would operate differently if you had an analytics platform that could be the answer to all these “what if” questions.

If you have ever asked these questions only to be told ‘It can’t be done’ or ‘We can do that as long as that’s all you want to do’, then you are setting an artificial limit on business potential. You are also definitely stuck in a conventional thinking rut.

Now, what if I told you that such a system already exists?  What if I told you that it lets you answer all those “what if” questions? What if I told you it is simply configured for your business? What if I told you that the next time you sat down with your business customers, you opened with “We can do whatever you need, right now, as long as the data exists?” Think how your business will grow when you can extract a true competitive advantage from business analytics.

If you think this sounds too good to be true, then I encourage you to stay in the land of conventional thinking. But if you are tired from lying awake all night because the business keeps asking you for solutions to which you don’t have any answers, then you should give ASI a call at 610-265-9400 to see what the unconventional looks like.