Data is the new Oil (by Gerd leonhard futurist)

Data is the new Oil (by Gerd leonhard futurist)
Originally uploaded by gleonhard

Came across this on Gerd Leonhard's flickr page...

He says:

Having access to information on what people do, what they like, who they are, where they are, where they go to, what they buy, the click streams, the digital bread crums, the digital exhaust... that's the new oil!

Cool point. My little contribution to this would be that Oil has value only when it is used to fuel a car, a plane.

Data similarly is of value when it is a Fuel for other things.

Data is presently flooding the market. In the world of data, OPEC could not survive with their cartel methods of price control.

So data is abundant. And data is not expensive. Yet, data is not an end in itself.

Data is Fuel for other things, like Insight. And I mean real business insight, not the kind of stuff I see passed off for insight.

While everyone rushes for the data, they are not dealing with the issue of what they will do with the New Oil.

What business engines are being built right now?

The excitement for me is in the construction of Ideas and Insight from the Data Fuel. The challenge for companies is the default reaction to see data as the end to itself (e.g. immense fortunes spent on CRM systems that go nowhere).

Comments

[Sander Duivestein]

Thanks for this insight. It definitely helps me with my own research. Great stuff!

[Nick Morris]

Check out the interview that we did with Gerd a couple of weeks ago. Really interesting and he talks about his new book. There's an extract on our blog or you can log-in.
http://c8blog.canvas8.com/blog/?p=3

Apologies I've not been in touch recently but been snowed. Will give you a call later on.

Nick