The FORCE … It is about comprehension, stupid!

“It is the economy, stupid” was the campaign slogan that fueled Bill Clinton’s win over George H. Bush. In the today’s competitive world “it is comprehension” of data and analytics that will drive success.

Newton’s second law of motion suggests that force is expanded as the mass of an object and its acceleration are increased. Force equals mass times acceleration ( F=ma) and when either element increases, the force expands. In other words, faster speed of change imposed on a larger body of matter leads to an amplified force. That is the story of data today—more data created at a faster pace generating greater force.

More computing power coupled with the trends in digitization (turning data into machine readable format) has led to the creation of a tremendously large body of data (the mass). On the other hand, advancements in technology and shifts in consumer use patterns have caused an increase in the speed of change (the acceleration). The combination of these two factors has created an enormously powerful force that is opening new paths to insight and fueling innovation. This force helps “Ahas” be realized faster and business advantages to crystallize more quickly.

This force makes the process of strategizing much more complex and business advantages temporary. The force creates the impetus that can render established strategies not only inefficient but harmful. Some label this force “Big Data”, the source of “Competing on Analytics.” Big data provides both the energy that drives the need to plan dynamically and the fuel for the engines of dynamic strategizing.

Today, the force of big data and the insight it carries may be immense, but let’s not forget that this force has always been around.

In the early '80s, analysts, using a good old HP calculator, manually tabulated pages and pages of financial and performance data to obtain insights. At the time, the data was too much or too “big” and mistakes always led to a huge amount of re-work. The invention of “Dbase2,” a rudimentary database, solved this big data problem. The ease and expansion of use drove a demand for more power, speed, and capabilities. Again, data was becoming too big to process and comprehend with available technologies. As a consequence, companies like Oracle and Microsoft invented and commercialized relational databases—the big data problem was solved.

The Internet allowed people across the globe to buy and sell from their bedrooms—more transactions and more complex data generated around the clock. A big data challenge that, once more, was solved with the next generation of technologies. Later, as people started to interact with each other in an unstructured manner (mostly by text)—a higher volume and greater variety of data was generated at increased velocity. Once again, new databases (e.g., NoSQL) and virtual processing capabilities came to the rescue, to solve yet another big data problem.

Ahead, is the IoT (Internet of Things) revolution—promising more and more data to be produced from all sorts of objects (e.g., electric utility meters, cars, watches, power plants, homes, cows, refrigerators, etc.) expressing themselves constantly. Yet another big data problem has been born and technologists are hard at work solving it.

Data has always grown too big and technology has always, eventually, solved the problem. Every time the data gets bigger, the force of its insight and impact also gets bigger. More data produced at a faster rate equals a greater force of insights, “Ahas,” and advantages.

The real test for leaders is not technology or size of data, but comprehension at a speed faster than the competition. The challenge is to see the signals earlier and to understand the impacts quicker—to go from data to insight faster than the competition.

The force of insight from data is without a doubt massive and getting increasingly more powerful. Although technology facilitates the access to the force and the insight it carries, it does not guarantee a win in the marketplace. Advantages don’t magically appear because we are “competing on analytics.” They are a result of “competing on analytically informed strategies.”

Fuel your strategies with a constant flow of innovation coupled with rapid and decisive actions. Put this force and its offspring, insight, behind your thinking and doing. Companies and leaders who push against this force are doomed to lose—to collapse and crumble. As Star Trek fans know, “Resistance is Futile.”

The future will be ruled by visionary leaders who are not derailed by the hoopla of big data and analytics and are focused on comprehension, innovation, and strategy. Leaders who see information and data as a critical asset and not just a byproduct of doing business will gain the winning edge by discovering advantages and adjusting course as needed.

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” —Helen Keller

Chapter 3, The Caterpillar’s Edge (www.TheCaterpillarsEdge.Com)