The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions

CHAPTER 4

Dataviz in the DNA

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

—George Bernard Shaw

After reading the previous chapter, you might be feeling a little intimated. Netflix is a company worth nearly $21 billion as of this writing. As you read a few pages ago, Netflix gathers the types of insights about its subscribers about which most other organizations can only dream. It's only natural for you to be a bit apprehensive. Maybe you're even asking yourself a question like, Is that what it takes to be a Visual Organization? Fortunately, as you'll see in the following pages, the answer is a definitive no.

These days, stories of start-ups receiving millions of dollars in venture capital (VC) funding permeate the business headlines. Many pundits openly wonder whether we have entered another tech bubble redolent of the late 1990s. For instance, Groupon said no to Google's $6 billion offer prior to going public in November 2011. More recently, in November 2013, Snapchat reportedly rebuffed Facebook's acquisition offer. Evidently, $3 billion wasn't a sufficiently high number. Later that month, Dropbox announced that it was seeking $250 million of additional funding that would value the company at a remarkable $8 billion.¹

The bubble question is a fair one, but it's easy to forget that popular start-ups like Snapchat, Dropbox, Instagram, Tumblr, and their ilk still represent the exceptions, not the rule. Most start-ups don't ...