Using the Insight Engine
The Insight Engine is an advanced strategic intelligence tool that helps you manage, validate, and act on the insights that drive your strategy. It goes beyond simple insight capture to provide quality scoring, assumption testing, competitive advantage assessment, pattern discovery, and structured debate.
Accessing the Insight Engine
Navigate to Insights in the top navigation bar. The Insight Engine dashboard opens with a summary bar and six tabbed sections.
Summary Dashboard
The top of the page shows five key metrics at a glance:
- Total Insights — All insights captured across planning phases
- Brutal Truths — Insights flagged as uncomfortable but critical truths
- Assumptions Being Tested — Strategic assumptions currently under validation
- Competitive Advantages — Identified and assessed advantages
- Industry Patterns Matched — Known patterns relevant to your industry
Tab 1: Insights
View and manage all strategic insights captured during planning.
Insight Quality Scoring
Each insight is scored across five dimensions (1-5 scale):
- Clarity — Is the insight clearly articulated?
- Relevance — Does it matter for strategic decisions?
- Actionability — Can you act on it?
- Evidence — Is there supporting data?
- Confidence — How confident are you in its accuracy?
An overall quality score (0-100) is calculated from these dimensions. Use it to prioritize which insights should most influence your strategy.
Linking Insights to Priorities
Click Link to Priority on any insight to connect it to one or more of your key priorities. This creates a lineage chain showing which insights support which strategic choices.
Marking Brutal Truths
Flag an insight as a "Brutal Truth" when it represents an uncomfortable reality that cannot be ignored. These are highlighted prominently to ensure they receive appropriate attention.
Tab 2: Assumptions
Strategic assumptions are beliefs about the future that underpin your strategy. If an assumption is wrong, parts of your strategy may need to change.
Creating Assumptions
- Click Add Assumption
- Enter the assumption text (e.g., "Enterprise customers will continue to consolidate vendors over the next 3 years")
- Link it to the insight it comes from
- Indicate which priorities depend on this assumption
- Mark whether it is load-bearing (critical to the strategy)
Validating Assumptions
Each assumption can be moved through validation states:
- Untested — Not yet validated (starting state)
- Testing — Currently being validated with data or experiments
- Validated — Evidence confirms the assumption
- Invalidated — Evidence contradicts the assumption
- Inconclusive — Evidence is mixed
For each assumption, you can document a test proposal (how you will validate it), estimated cost and time, and the test result.
Critical: Pay special attention to load-bearing assumptions. If a load-bearing assumption is invalidated, you may need to revisit your strategic choices.
Tab 3: Competitive Advantages
Assess the sustainability of your competitive advantages.
Each Advantage Is Scored On:
- Durability (1-10) — How long will this advantage last?
- Defensibility (1-10) — How hard is it for competitors to replicate?
- Compounding (1-10) — Does it get stronger over time?
The system calculates an overall sustainability rating and identifies erosion factors — things that could weaken the advantage over time.
Advantage Status
- Current — Active and being leveraged
- Emerging — Building but not yet fully realized
- Decaying — Being eroded by market changes or competition
- Lost — No longer provides meaningful advantage
AI Assessment
Click Run AI Assessment to have the AI analyze your competitive advantages based on your organization data, market position, and competitor information. The AI provides recommendations for strengthening or defending each advantage.
Tab 4: Debates
Structured debates allow teams to discuss contested insights through a formal process.
Creating a Debate
- Click New Debate
- Select the insight to debate
- The debate opens with "For" and "Against" evidence sections
Contributing to a Debate
Team members can add evidence supporting or challenging the insight. Each piece of evidence includes:
- The argument or evidence
- Supporting data or sources
- The contributor's perspective
AI Synthesis
Click Synthesize to have the AI analyze both sides and provide a balanced summary. The synthesis identifies the strongest arguments, areas of agreement, and remaining uncertainties.
Resolution
A debate can be resolved with one of several outcomes: validated, invalidated, modified, or escalated for further investigation.
Tab 5: Strategic Learnings
As you execute your strategy, you will discover things that should inform future planning. Strategic learnings capture these discoveries:
- Learning type — Pattern, insight, or failure
- Trigger — What prompted this learning (execution, market change, customer feedback)
- Impact on strategy — Does this change anything?
- Recommended action — What should be done in response?
- Urgency — How quickly does this need attention?
Learnings can be marked as acknowledged, actioned, or incorporated into the strategy.
Strategic Learning Loop Analysis
Click Run Learning Loop Analysis to have the AI review your execution data, compare it against your original assumptions, and identify what you have learned. This is the heart of the Strategic Learning framework — a continuous cycle of doing, learning, and adapting.
Tab 6: Industry Patterns
The platform includes a library of common strategic patterns organized by industry. Each pattern includes:
- Description — What the pattern looks like
- Warning signs — How to spot it early
- Recommended actions — What to do about it
- Severity and frequency — How common and how dangerous
The AI automatically matches patterns to your organization based on your industry, competitors, and planning data. Matched patterns appear with a relevance indicator showing how closely they apply to your situation.
Examples of patterns: "Incumbent Complacency," "Feature Parity Trap," "Market Myopia," "Innovation Theater," "Disruption From Below"