The Speed of Business is 2.4

If I stated the numbers 1.21 (pronounced one point twenty-one) and 42, what would they mean to you?

You may recognize one or both of these numbers as pop culture references. The former, 1.21 comes from the Back to the Future movie franchise. Doc informs Marty they need 1.21 gigawatts of power from a lightning strike in order to activate their Delorean time machine.

The latter, number 42 is found in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book by Douglas Adams. Here the number is the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” as calculated by a supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years.

There’s a third significant number, although it is not *yet* popular. That and that is the number “2.4”. What is its significance? This number represents the speed of business.

A lot of the technology solutions in present-day digital transformations promote the near-instantaneous decision-making possible with the analysis of copious amounts of data. The speed of business is presented as today's issue. There is value to be won and lost by being decisive with a quick speed to decision time. True.

On the other end of the spectrum, decisions to build new assets at the start of the decision lifecycle commit an organization to own and manage plants and facilities…