Business moments and contextual intelligence

The intelligent enterprise of the 21st century needs the fusion and infusion of data and knowledge based on contextual intelligence to support decision making at business moments.

Gartner introduced the concept of ‘business moments’ as a next level of digital re-invention that enables organizations to compete with unprecedented business velocity and agility. These moments are described as ‘transient opportunities which are exploited dynamically’.

Intelligent business processes compress the ‘insight-to-action’ cycle time from days to minutes or seconds, so these transient business moments can be exploited when they occur. To enable this, business operations must be supported along the entire scale from automated to human decision making. They have to stay in sync with the business strategy, even if an enterprise evolves to a state of continuous strategizing (see amongst others Blueprint for an IBPMS competence center).

Contextual intelligence deals with the practical application of knowledge and information to real-world situations. It addresses the capacity to exploit business moments and operational events in a way that enables to make informed decisions and take effective action in varied, changing and uncertain situations.

Contextual intelligence enables the business operating system to provide services, support interactions and nurture conversations between actors based on meaning and behavior.

Traditional approaches to business process improvement often restrict change and stifle the process innovation and variation needed to respond dynamically to business moments. They are not able to work in a knowledge centric way because they are based in the information centric paradigm of the last century.


The knowledge-centric paradigm shifts the focus of system design from computer-oriented features to the meaning of those features in terms of the people, places, things, and events in the world outside the computer.

See also: De-robotizing and this slideshare presentation about Contextual intelligence.

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