Inside the Domosphere

A New Formation in Business Intelligence

With the recent SuperBowl weekend, I couldn’t help but reflect on a lesson I learned playing football that parallels the message found in “The New School of Dashboards”, an executive brief from Domo.

Joe Gibbs, NFL hall of fame football coach and only coach to win three Superbowls with three different starting quarterbacks, is credited with being the first to use the trips formation. Trips is an offensive formation where one side of the field is overloaded with three offensive receivers.

The first time I saw the trips formation, I was playing defensive back in a zone cover configuration and found myself wondering how was I supposed to cover three receivers who had just lined up across from me. I called time out and ran over to the coaches and asked, “Can they put three receivers on one side like that?”

Unfortunately for me the answer was yes and the trips formation resulted in our opponent scoring four touchdowns in the first quarter and three in the second quarter, and was the worst whooping I have ever experienced. As a result, I have never forgotten that innovation can lead to significant and even overwhelming advantage.

The status quo in business intelligence is being challenged and venture capital is flooding into the space where there is both hype and promise. “The New School of Dashboards” outlines a new “formation” for the BI dashboard space. Companies who deploy their dashboard’s following this formation can reap great advantage over their competitors. And just like Joe Gibbs—who also invented the single back, double or triple tight end sets to slow down Lawrence Taylor—the companies that will win are the ones who are willing to embrace change and constantly innovate.

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