Scientists say that gathering data used to be like a walk in the desert. To get any water, you would have to hang out a giant tarp and wait for a small drop of rain to fall on it, only to hope it would travel down into a thermos to quench your thirst. Today, gathering data is easy. You walk out the door and are deluged by a torrential stream of bits.
Gathering reams of data, storing it, and accessing it has become easier and easier, but organizations are regularly frustrated that they’re not seeing a steady and voluminous flow of actionable information as a result. At the root of these frustrations are a series of ideas about “data”—how it works and what it can do—that are, frankly, incorrect.
To begin to understand why, consider the journey we’ve been on for the past few decades. Many of us were stranded in that metaphorical desert. A drop of water in the desert is precious, and so its uses are meticulous. With such limited water, you’re careful to use it in exactly the way you need to achieve your goals. When you’re flooded with cheap and easy water in the suburbs, you water your lawn until it’s practically submerged. If you had lived through the desert and found your way to suburban utopia, you would take pride in your reckless abandon.
Generic data are cheap and omnipresent today, and those of us who ...
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