Praise for OGP
Our first priority is our clients’ success. We use industry honours as a benchmark to ensure we produce work at the forefront of our field.
Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman
In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman cites our reference class forecasting tool as the single most important piece of advice regarding how to increase accuracy in forecasting.
The full quote reads:
“The renowned Danish planning expert Bent Flyvbjerg, now at Oxford University, offered a forceful summary:
‘The prevalent tendency to underweight or ignore distributional information is perhaps the major source of error in forecasting. Planners should therefore make every effort to frame the forecasting problem so as to facilitate utilizing all the distributional information that is available.’
This may be considered the single most important piece of advice regarding how to increase accuracy in forecasting through improved methods. Using such distributional information from other ventures similar to that being forecasted is called taking an “outside view” and is the cure to the planning fallacy…”
- Kahneman, D. (2011): Thinking, Fast and Slow. Simon Schuster: New York, pp. 251-252.
Client Testimonials
Sven Blumberg, Partner at McKinsey & Company: “Reflecting on the [OGP] project I see three areas of impact in particular. First, the research created an empirical base to help us support the planning and decision making of our clients. So far the data from your research was used at more than 20 of our clients, who as a result have made a better informed decision. Secondly, your research has helped us developing an assessment framework which we use to analyse the complexities a project faces and the organisational capabilities of our clients to deliver against that. Thirdly, your research has helped us to dispel commonly held assumptions about the true risk drivers of projects, for instance your insight that time is a much larger risk driver than project spend has led to an 11th hour decision in one of our clients to not go forward with a 5-year, multimillion IT project."
Tim Banfield, Director at the UK National Audit Office: “The global research [you] have been undertaking ... has proved an invaluable source of evidence for the NAO ... Your analysis has made a substantial contribution to the evidence base underpinning our research into the factors driving the success, or otherwise, of major projects. As an example of the impact which this work [has had is] our environmental complexity analytic [which] forms the front end of the IUK Route map published earlier this year. Your work - and importantly our discussions - was an important contributory evidence source."
Deputy Director at the US Government Accountability Office, California High Speed Rail: "Your work was one of several factors we considered in reviewing the process used to prepare ridership and revenue forecasts. It was not our intent to opine on the precise point estimates of the forecasts but rather the process used to prepare the forecasts. If a sensitivity and an extreme downside analysis had not been conducted we would have discussed this in the report and suggested that it be addressed in future forecasts. It might not have led to a recommendation but it would have been a flaw in the process that needed to be addressed in order to get more reliable forecasts."
Research Honours
Our research has been featured in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, China Daily, Nature, Science, the BBC and CNN.
Our ideas have also been recognised by leaders at the intersection of academia and business:
PMI Research Achievement Award
#1 Idea to Watch, Harvard Business Review
EIASM Interdisciplinary Leader Award
Emerald Citation of Excellence 2017 Award
Paper of the Year 2015, Project Management Journal
Key Thinker on Cities