Being able to appreciate individual limitations

Incomplete knowledge is a factor that has to be specifically allowed for if any e-business strategy has any chance of being successful. However, it may be relatively easy to recognise and make allowance for limitations and knowledge gaps in others, but, far more difficult for people to recognise and make allowances for their own. For this reason, it may be worth looking at some academic investigations that have been made into personal self appraisal.

Such a study is outlined in an article on the Web entitled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments" (http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html) by Justin Kruger and David Dunning from the Department of Psychology, Cornell University. This interesting document offers some clues as to why it might be difficult for us to be able to allow for our own deficiencies in Game Theory strategies.

Kruger and Dunning cite several papers that have found widespread evidence that people seem to be inaccurate in appraising themselves and their abilities in environments where they have little experience. Quoting Charles Darwin (1871), who over a century ago noted, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge", they point to several studies that have revealed what is called the "above-average effect". This is the tendency for most people to believe they are above average, when asked to give their opinion as to their own capability compared to the capability of their peers. People tend to think they have more leadership qualities than the average, able to get along with people better than the average, be better business managers or shrewder judges than their peers. This of course is not logical because half of people must, by definition, be below average.

Studies seem to suggest that the tendency toward inflated self-appraisals is strongest amongst those who are the least competent: novices overrating their abilities far more than experts. Also, in certain areas that involve logical reasoning, some individuals seemed not to have sufficient mental ability to be competent. Such individuals might then have a double whammy in as much as the ability needed to acquire competence is the same ability that is needed to judge their own competence against others - the observation summed up by the old adage "where ignorance is bliss".

While testing their hypotheses by setting up experiments with students, Kruger and Dunning made two other observations that have relevance to the effects of knowledge gaps in e-business. Firstly, the students who came out best in the tests had a tendency to underestimate their own abilities. They assumed that others had a similar degree of competence as themselves and therefore tended to rate themselves as modestly above this wrongly perceived average.

Secondly, it was found that where a lack of ability or knowledge was patently obvious - such as where competence involved a demonstrable competitive skill, or, an obvious natural ability - there was no attempt for people to over estimate their abilities. If anything, such people tended to under estimate their abilities when there were clear cut reality restraints. This is perhaps why so many people don't try to grasp the basics of certain key technological subjects: because they think them beyond their ability to comprehend.

These may be the the conclusions from arcane academic experiments with students, but, if mapped across to the world of e-business, they compound the problems associated with knowledge gaps because often many knowledge gaps are unrecognised or get distorted.