Fail Fast, Learn Faster

4The State of Data in the Corporate World Today

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

—Niccolo Machiavelli

If necessity is the mother of invention, it can be said that opportunity often arises in response to chaos and adversity. Mainstream companies came to embrace Big Data out of the catastrophe of the financial crisis of 2008–2009 and a decade of market disruption. New business challenges were fueled by the rise of data-driven competitors. The new threats came from companies that were conceived in the wake of the Internet and emergence of the digital economy. These companies deployed data as a competitive weapon. Mainstream companies were awakened to the necessity of thinking differently about data and how it could be leveraged as a business asset.

It was at this moment, nearly a decade ago in 2012, that NewVantage Partners, the strategic advisory firm that I had founded in 2001, recognized the demand on the part of mainstream companies to understand the impact of Big Data on their businesses. In response, we launched a high-level executive survey that eventually became an industry standard, and which we have continued to execute annually ever since. The survey is conducted in December of each year, with the results and findings being published in the first week of the New Year. NewVantage Partners' ninth annual executive survey of corporate C-executives was published in January 2021.

The executive survey was first launched in response to a plea resulting from an executive ...