1. A method of benchmarking to rank and position the performance of an entity in specific areas by identifying key discriminators that drive toward specific levels of business performance comprising the steps of obtaining business performance information for a plurality of entities, the business performance information including a first set of performance criteria, each performance criterion of the first set of performance criteria having an associated value for scoring the performance of the plurality of entities, and applying rule induction techniques to evaluate the first set of performance criteria and associated values to identify an optimal subset of performance criteria that are the key discriminators.