Douglas W. Hubbard Explained

Douglas Hubbard is a management consultant, speaker, and author in decision sciences and actuarial science.

Career

Hubbard was a business analyst at Coopers & Lybrand^[1] in 1988 after finishing his MBA at the University of South Dakota. He formed Hubbard Decision Research in 1998.

Views

He is critical of several popular methods and standards in risk management and decision making in organizations. He argues that extensive research in methods such as "risk matrices", the use of weighted scores in decision making, and expert intuition are inferior to certain quantitative methods.^[2]

Hubbard is known for asserting that everything can be measured,^[3] and that initial measurements are the most valuable as they reduce the greatest amounts of uncertainty.

Selected publications

Books

• Book: How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business . 2007 . . 9781118983836 . ^[4]
• Book: The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It . Wiley . 2009 . 9781119198536. ^[5]
• Book: Pulse: The New Science of Harnessing Internet Buzz to Track Threats and Opportunities . Wiley . 2011 . 9781119200956.
• Book: How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk . Wiley . 2016 . 9781119162315. ^[6]

His first two books are listed on the Book List for the Society of Actuaries Exam Prep.^[7]

His books are on the reading list at School of Business and Economics (College of Charleston), Jon M. Huntsman School of Business (Utah State University), and Carl H. Lindner College of Business (University of Cincinnati).

Other publications

• Shepherd, K., Hubbard, D., Fenton, N., Claxton, K., Luedeling, E., & deLeeuw, J. (2015). Policy: Development goals should enable decision-making. Nature. July 2015. https://doi.org/10.1038/523152a^[8]
  • Hubbard, D., & Evans, D. (2010). Problems with scoring methods and ordinal scales in risk assessment. IBM Journal of Research and Development, 54(3), 2–1. doi.org/10.1147/jrd.2010.2042914 Hubbard, D., & Samuelson, D. A. (2009). Analysis placebos: The difference between perceived and real benefits of risk analysis and decision models. Analytics Magazine. Fall 2009.
• Hubbard, D., & Samuelson, D. A. (2009). Modeling Without Measurements: How the decision analysis culture's lack of empiricism reduces its effectiveness. OR/MS Today, 36(5), 26–31.
• Hubbard, D. (2009). It's all an illusion: The perception that many things are immeasurable is common — it's also an illusion. ArchitectureBoston. 11(5) .
• Hubbard, D. (2003). Expert analysis: An effective measure. CIO: ROIowa. August 2003.^[9]
• Mayor, T., & Hubbard, D. (2001). Case study:^[10] Red light, green light. CIO Enterprise Magazine. October, 2001.
• Worthen, B., & Hubbard., D. (2001). Case Study: Two Teams are better than one. CIO Enterprise Magazine. 2001.
• Hubbard, D. W. (1997). Risk vs. return. InformationWeek, (637), 105.

Awards

• 2017 PaloAlto Networks Cybersecurity Canon Award
• 2017 Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Fellow

Notes and References

1. Web site: Book review: How to Measure Anything, by Douglas W Hubbard . . Ian Grant . 12 September 2007 . 1 June 2022.
2. Book: Handbook of Human Factors in Air Transportation Systems . 204–205 . 2017 . 9781351653145 . . Steven James Landry.
3. Book: Succeeding with AI: How to make AI work for your business . 109 . Veljko Krunic . 9781638356318 . . 2020.
4. Reviews of How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business:
5. Reviews of The Failure of Risk Management:
6. Reviews of How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk:
7. Web site: Fall 2021 FSA Exam Book List | SOA.
8. Shepherd. Keith. Hubbard. Douglas. Fenton. Norman. Claxton. Karl. Luedeling. Eike. de Leeuw. Jan. 2015-07-08. Policy: Development goals should enable decision-making. Nature. en. 523. 7559. 152–154. 10.1038/523152a. 26156358. 0028-0836. 2015Natur.523..152S. free.
9. News: ROIowa. CIO. 2018-11-19.
10. News: Case Study: Red light, green light. IT World Canada. 2018-11-19. en-US.