FEATURE: STAFF RESOURCES
Data is as necessary to the marketplace
as the people who manage the business,
and the money that pays for it all. This
simple idea has big implications. It
means that data is now a kind of capital,
on par with financial and human capital
in creating new digital products and
services. Enterprises need to pay special
attention to data capital, because it’s
the source of much of the added value
in the world economy.
“More and more important assets
in the economy are composed of
bits instead of atoms,” notes Erik
Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT
Initiative on the Digital Economy. In
fact, many companies that are light
on physical assets but heavy on data
assets -for instance, Airbnb, Facebook,
and Netflix-have changed the terms
of competition in their respective
industries. While many incumbent
companies possess comparably large
troves of data, they don’t exploit it
nearly as well. These companies must
adopt a new mindset, Brynjolfsson
says: “They should start thinking of
data as an asset.”
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INTELLIGENTCIO
A 2011 study conducted by Brynjolfsson
and colleagues at MIT and the
University of Pennsylvania supports
the concept of data as a capital asset.
Brynjolfsson acknowledges that the
concept of an intangible asset can be
challenging to grasp.
“You can’t see data the way you
can see buildings, and people are
inevitably biased against things that
they can’t see,” he says. “It’s a blind
spot. But this is something that is
more and more important to the world
economy. It’s not visible, but it’s still
“Data is now a
form of capital.
Contrary to
conventional
wisdom, data is
not an abundant
resource.”
something that smart managers have
to keep an eye on.”
Generating return from data capital
is not simply a matter of adding new
technology to the enterprise. It’s a
question of integrating that technology
with the existing enterprise architecture
to create a sustainable competitive
advantage. Oracle’s comprehensive
portfolio of big-data solutions, built on a
hybrid cloud architecture, can help drive
the competitive strategy and business
value. One of the simplest ways to begin
experimenting with new value from
data is through cloud services.
Bottom line: If you demand to know
the full value of your data capital
before investing in it, you’ll find some
of that value fading away. So whether
you’re just beginning to bring these
technologies into the business or looking
to make them business as usual, don’t
hesitate to take the next step.
Are there any ways in which the use
of data will make employees more
effective in their jobs?
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