There is a line from Terry Pratchett that has no business being as useful in boardrooms as it is on rainy cobbled streets. It comes from Men at Arms, via Samuel Vimes, a man who understands both poverty and wet feet better than most consultants understand PowerPoint.
“The reason that the rich were so rich… was because they managed to spend less money.”
The example that follows is simple enough to explain to a child and, apparently, too subtle for large organisations to grasp. A rich man buys a good pair of boots that last for years. A poor man buys cheap boots, replaces them often, and over time spends more while remaining permanently damp.
It is, in essence, a theory about false economy. And it applies rather neatly to how companies approach market intelligence.
Most organisations do not think of themselves as the “cheap boots” buyer. No one wakes up intending to make expensive mistakes based on poor information. Yet this is precisely what happens, usually dressed up as prudence.
The pattern is familiar. A decision appears. Enter a new market. Launch a product. Back a strategy that someone senior has already half decided is correct. The stakes are not trivial, but the instinct is to keep the upfront cost down. Someone suggests a quick internal exercise. A bit of desk research. A few conversations with people who conveniently agree with the approach.
The corporate equivalent of a £10 pair of boots.
At first, it feels efficient. Money saved. Time saved. A decision made. There is even a quiet satisfaction in having “cut through the noise” without paying someone else to tell you what you already believe. Then the rain starts.
The market turns out to be more competitive than expected. Customers behave differently when they are paying rather than nodding politely. Regulation, which looked manageable in summary, becomes less accommodating in practice. The local partner, who seemed excellent over coffee, proves less impressive under contract.
None of this arrives dramatically. It creeps in. A delay here, an unexpected cost there, another round of “just a bit more research” commissioned after the fact, usually at twice the urgency and three times the price. Another pair of cheap boots.
And so, the cycle continues. Small savings at the beginning, larger costs at the end, and a lingering sense that something has gone wrong without anyone being entirely sure where.
The uncomfortable truth is that market intelligence behaves exactly like Vimes’ boots. The cheaper option is rarely cheaper. It is simply deferred cost, with interest.
Good intelligence is not particularly glamorous. It does not arrive with dramatic music or sweeping conclusions. More often, it quietly removes bad options, clarifies trade-offs, and forces decisions to be made on reality rather than optimism.
Which is precisely why it is often undervalued. There is a bias in business towards visible activity. Building something. Launching something. Announcing something. Research, by contrast, can feel like a delay, a pause before the real work begins.
Until, of course, it isn’t. The organisations that consistently make better decisions tend to treat intelligence differently. They do not outsource thinking, but they do invest in informing it. They understand that clarity upfront is cheaper than correction later.
They buy the good boots. This does not mean commissioning vast, expensive reports for every minor decision. That would be its own form of excess. The point is not to spend more indiscriminately, but to spend appropriately where the risk justifies it.
A £50 decision does not require a £10,000 study. A £50 million decision probably does. The problem is not that companies do not know this. It is that, in the moment, urgency and optimism have a habit of winning the argument.
There is also a subtler issue. Cheap intelligence is not just about cost; it is about confidence. Poor quality information has a way of looking convincing enough to act on, but not robust enough to withstand reality. It encourages movement without direction, which is a surprisingly expensive way to operate.
Better intelligence tends to be less accommodating. It asks awkward questions. It challenges assumptions. Occasionally, it suggests that a well-loved idea is not as viable as hoped.
This is not a flaw. It is the entire point. Pratchett’s genius was in recognising that unfairness is often built into systems that appear rational on the surface. The poor man is not choosing to spend more on boots. He simply cannot afford not to.
In business, the dynamic is slightly more awkward. Companies can afford to invest in better information. They simply choose not to, because the saving is immediate and the cost is abstract. It sits somewhere in the future, negotiable and easy to ignore.
Until it isn’t. Then it arrives all at once, dressed as a delay, a budget overrun, or a strategy that needs revisiting. At which point someone, usually late in the process, suggests getting proper insight. Better late than never. But rarely cheaper.
So, the next time the question comes up, do we really need to spend on this level of research, it is worth picturing Vimes standing in a puddle, looking down at his boots, and doing the maths.
Because the maths, irritatingly, tends to be right.
By Peter Zanatta
