Fail Fast, Learn Faster

6The Rise of the Chief Data Officer

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

—Mark Twain

Many years ago, when I started in industry, I was intrigued by the notion that there seemed to be a lot of data, which if organized and made accessible to the right people might yield some genuine insights that could be beneficial to a business. It seemed obvious at the time that if only there was a chief data executive whose job it was to think about data and how to use it, we would be all set. In the intervening years, advances in technology have enabled us to capture and manage more data than ever. Technology has even enabled us to create a lot more data than ever imagined – vast amounts. Has more data led to a proportional increase in the level of insight, or has it made it more challenging to get to the big insight?

It may be hard to appreciate today, but there was a time in the not-too-distant past when data analysts, with a few notable exceptions, were relegated to the hidden recesses of most corporations. Better to toil away in the bowels than to be shown the light of day. For many decades, even as information technology (IT) emerged as a critical business function, data was often viewed as something that firms filed away in vaults for the mandatory seven years to comply with regulators, and not as a business asset that could be analyzed to unlock critical business insights. For many corporations, prior to the emergence and popularization ...