"We failed to anticipate Pearl Harbor
not for want of the relevant
materials but because of a
plethora of irrelevant ones."
— Roberta Wohlstetter
Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision
Roberta Wohlsetter won the Bancroft Prize, the highest honor a historian can win, for her exhaustive study of the run up to Pearl Harbor. Her conclusion, highlighted above, was that there was so much "noise" — so much
irrelevant, incorrect or misleading information, that the important information was ignored or misinterpreted. This dilemma is known to historians as "The Roberta Wohlsetter Problem," and it applies to business decisions just as well as military intelligence. Our job here at PerishablePundit.com is to ease the problem for executives by mining the information super-highway to select what is truly important to know and to provide insight as to its meaning and significance. First, that perishables are, and for the foreseeable future will be, the crucial arena for differentiating competition in the food marketing business.
2. Second, that looking at the business solely through the prism of long established departments specializing in different perishable areas such as produce, deli, meat, dairy, bakery, seafood and floral no longer is sufficient.
3. Third, that executives, confronted with understanding the significance of perishables to their operations and directing the success of these operations, are presented with an overabundance of information, and the challenge is to determine what information is important and what is its meaning and significance.
