Rethinking data as a living system, not a static resource

We need to rethink our language around how we talk about data.

This essay was contributed by Adam Husein, a global data and analytics executive and builder of enterprise decision platforms. Advising organizations on data strategy, AI, pricing, personalization, forecasting, and measurable commercial performance.

If you’ve worked in business over the last decade you’ve heard data compared to things like oil or electricity. You may have heard that our data needs to be moved to a warehouse or a lake. But data does not inherently create value when it sits in place; it creates value when it moves through the organization to inform and shape decisions. Too many leadership teams in legacy companies still treat data as a storage problem. I hear discussions about “centralizing” the data, when the real challenge is building a decision system that gets the right information to the right person at the right time. In a healthy company, data should function less like inventory on a shelf and more like the body’s circulatory system, moving continuously through t…