Part Two: Data-Informed Decision Making “I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians, and I’m not kidding.” – Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google We live in the Information Age, defined by Merriam-Webster as “a time in which information has become a commodity that is quickly and widely disseminated and easily available especially through the use of computer technology.” Knowledge previously recorded on paper and living in libraries is now digitally domiciled and hovering in the cloud. Information is accessible from anywhere, at any time – and the sheer volume of it being captured has exploded. We’ve produced more data in the last two years than we did throughout the entirety of human history before that. The only thing growing as rapidly as data itself, fortunately, is our ability to process it. Computing power is increasing at an exponential rate (literally) – for context, the latest iPhone has over 1.5 billion times more processing power than the NASA supercomputer that landed man on the moon. Data itself is a commodity – like a bag of grapes anyone can grab from their local grocer for a few bucks. But winemakers have shown that those same grapes, when harvested in a specific way, blended precisely with other ingredients, and fermented for a particular amount of time, can be transformed into a highly valued fine wine. But renowned vino producers didn’t just get lucky the first time they made a batch. The masters will tell you their best product is the result of years of iteratively fine tuning their process, maniacally focusing on understanding the variables at play and analyzing how they interact with each other to optimize the blend with each successive vintage. Analogizing grapes to data might be a bit of a stretch, but hopefully the premise is clear. Leveraging data to make strategic decisions is important… no shit, Sherlock! But the reality is we are still in the early innings of the information revolution, and while more organizations are beginning to weave data-informed decisioning into the fabric of company culture, transforming behavior and ushering - 7 -