Opportunities for tomorrow

I had a tough time building this post. On the one hand, i wanted to elaborate the role each of the players play and on the other wanted to build a framework of success- thank you MBA for one great skill. After extensive research the past couple of weeks, let me start with a bold but controversial statement.

Bold controversial statement

In a perfect data enabled world, perfect information will be available to all. This implies that all products, and services will be reduced to the status of a commodity - this world sounds very much like Marxism or communism or anti-opportunity.

I happened to watch the first of the "Divergent" movies and the system of tribes there seemed to be the utopia towards which "data" would lead us. Clusters of people with a natural affinity to prefer averages. Now outliers, individualism, creativity and humanity would either be viewed as divergent or plane out subversive.

I sometimes love the play on words and do so for not particular reason- but here the point is as we define precision and accuracy and experiences based on data; more opportunities open up as opposed to throwing us in the downward spiral that needs a revolution to break. That said, let me further define the three terms that caught attention in my last bottom-line.

Transparency

Open, honest and respectful is all I can aspire to in this world of deception, positioning and differentiation. Let us all agree that the world can be made a better place by being open and honest without being disrespectful to ourselves first then our stakeholders.

In the context of a big data implementation- Business leaders have to be honest about the culture and values they espouse- not merely verbalize. Management has plenty of opportunities to pursue after democratizing information in their organizations. Think of big data as a mechanism of getting out of the mundane tasks of informing the organization of what happened, where are we headed and what is going wrong. You will have more time to deeply examine the industry, define better experiences for your customers and target prospects not possible earlier just due to the lack of time. There will be more chances for innovation than ever before.

Curiosity

IT and Data Scientists have a vital role in the economy of the future- and it is not elimination of traditional jobs like a taxonomist for example. Your primary role is to provide more roles guidance and tools to up their game- think more strategically and leverage information to multiply the impact to the organization.  This giving guidance piece comes with a covenant of taking guidance as well from these roles as well as business leaders- the curiosity of the mechanics behind the data.

I expect the world to go through a storm of datafication- call it IoT, wearables, automation, big data, cognitive computing or a lot of new upcoming terms. We have just taken baby steps into the world of datafication- literally with Fitbit and now iWatch. There are processes, habits, patterns, practices, beliefs, and faith behind all the data that will be generated that requires sustained human thoughts to decipher. This will open up opportunities like never before- along  with the tools to build hypothesis, test them out and act on them really really fast.

Concerning wearables- I myself have gone from quantifying my activities to running competitions in my mind to competing rigorously on social media to abandoning my device in a drawer because the experience got boring. I went through the awareness, acquisition, adoption, evangelism to abandonment in a matter of months- a product lifecycle with an added death after the decline many tech companies today are struggling to overcome.

You need specialists to win races, your role is to give them better tools so you can reach organizational objectives faster, better and with less effort. In your industry you might need taxonomists, process manager, marketers, sales planners, financial analysts, product managers, service designer, podiatry analyst and professions that don't exist today  to actually use the data you capture, compile and surface to them; to build products and services that add value to your business. 

Scientific inquiry

Data Scientists are Scientists that happen to work with data- in my opinion. Informing, educating, mentoring your business partners to adopt scientific inquiry will enhance your organizations ability to seize bigger and better opportunities. Take the AirBnB "Discovery" example in my earlier post on "Breaking the silence", Data scientists could have collaborated closely with the product managers to reinvent the discovery feature and blown the world away with an experience that set a new bar for travel.

Such opportunities are not gone and done, hundreds appear every day  from all walks of life- building an infrastructure to act on them is a huge gift to mankind. You can start in your vocations or avocation- setup tests, experiment, learn from them and then build the data capture, collection and analytic models so that we all marvel at our creation!