The Economics of Technology and Data

Referring to a lecture from Daryl Plummer around this topic. Economics can be a complex subject, especially in a fast-paced world where you know you have to realize something, where there are many signals around telling us what we should do and what we shouldn't, what we can wait on and what we really need to jump on right now. Knowing if you missed those signals, you may be waved off.

In today's uncertain world, where things are changing so fast, if you missed the signals, you may never recover. The problem we have increasingly is “we don't have time” and sometimes “we don't even feel like we can do it.” Gartner research shows that only 35% of us believe that innovation is a part of our DNA. Everybody tells us to move faster but we are not built to do it and so we must figure out something that can give us an advantage now.

A little evidence if we start thinking about the last 20-30 years to simply recognize that things are happening. The mobile phone story rings a bell? When I was a trader, it was paramount to have the ability to communicate (timely) of the state of crop fields vs. flood, droughts, geopolitical instability, or other events, as it all meant immense value just for contract performance and risk management. At the time, only a few of the big bosses had mobiles and it was all about flexing status.

The AI world is going to be one where we will be put into a situation where the pace of change is speeding up so much and you're constantly asked to do all these things and before you can finish one, there are two or three others that are ready for you to start on, so if you feel a little bit harried or if you feel like all these technologies are just swamping you, you're not alone. Seeing the change from relational databases to synthetic data is not a simple thing.

Computation power – Actionable capacity vs. number of possible combinations per x items

Sometimes we feel like we can't catch up, we've got too much going on and we have to get past that we have to move from catch up, to keep up, to lead up and some out there are not even bothered, the reasons for the latter vary by segment and by the ego or amount of money still made.

So, when you are looking at signals, the key to transforming your DNA, is to set yourself to be able to iterate and pursue reading those signals early and correctly. Think about economics as a means of getting there because really there are many kinds of places or categories where signals can come from. As with virality on social media, if you have done it, you should have learned what drives an impact (likes) or not, and hopefully have a better understanding why.

Get in touch to help you with our challenge engineering approach and start a profitable transformational DNA journey with SWARM Engineering .