Summary

“Use data to make decisions? That’s crazy talk!” was a common thought in IT back in the 2000’s. Information Technology groups didn’t really understand the value of data – they treated it like money in the bank. They thought if they stored it in a database and kept it perfect that it would gain value — so they resisted letting people use it (especially in its most granular form). But there is no compound interest on locked up data. A better analogy would be the food in your freezer. You need to cycle through it. You need to pull things out and eat (eh, I mean use) them, otherwise they just go bad. Data is the same – it needs to be used, updated, and refreshed or else it loses value.