The answer is 42 - What is the Data Question?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy most famous statement 'The answer to Life, the Universe & Everything..... 42!' The problem was we didn't know the actual Ultimate Question to which the answer was 42... So picking another statement from our favourite SciFi - 'Don't Panic'.

• According to https://www.vlatkovedral.com/ Professor Vlatko Vedral (who is a Professor or Quantum Mechanics at Oxford) 'information is the basis for an ultimate theory of everything'... which sounds like it offers us that Ultimate Question! Check his interview on the BBC Life Scientific Podcast https://www.vlatkovedral.com/the-life-scientific-on-bbc-radio-4/

We're not going to get into the details of Understanding the Universe, but Is Data & Information the most important thing in business???.... the Intelligent Business needs to answer another Chicken and Egg question, which comes first, the Process or the Data.

• For decades, IT has focused on solving the problem of Process, because we almost describe businesses in terms of a number of Processes R2R (Record to Report), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), SCM (Supply Chain Management), etc etc.
• IT 1-0-1 basically focused on three steps - Input, Process, Output. Data has been managed as the Output of those Processes, not so much the Input and the Output.
• Many large businesses chasing 6Sigma have well established Process Owners and Champions, but still find it hard to put Data Stewards, Data Owners and Data Champions in place.

Taking a leaf from Prof Vladko, my Hypothesis, is that Data is the fundamental particle of business.

• Process is the old 'Newtonian Mechanics' that helped us describe and automate businesses for 50 years of IT from the 1970s to the 2020s, but its' time has past... We can dynamically reconfigure processes in response to events and the needs of our market and customers.
• To be an Intelligent Business you need to see that living and breathing the Data of your Customers, External Environment, People, Suppliers, Competitors is the 'Quantum Mechanics that will help you build a business that thrives and grows through the 2020s and beyond.

The Chief Data Officer needs to be helping everyone in the organisation to understand, live, breathe and drink in the data, whilst also fostering the search for those (not necessary Ultimate) questions which Data (and Analytics/AI) can help the business answer.

• Furthermore the CDO (Chief Data Officer) needs to be step out from the CIO/CTO and become the agent of change, whilst retaining a strong understanding of the technology landscape.
• The Intelligent Business needs a Data Centric/Data Driven Architecture. Data is the Input and the Output, so must become the primary asset and enabler of Value for the whole business.
• Meanwhile, the CDO does not attempt to be the singular driver of value. Instead, Marketing, Sales, Manufacturing, Customer Service, remain critical capabilities and their leaders must partner with the CDO and vice versa so that all available data is used to drive that ultimate business value.

42 is Data - What is your ultimate Information Question?