My mantra for the next decade: less hoarding, more sharing!

2020 is the year I offload. 2020 is the year I shed! First thing to go: My collection of “vintage” compact discs, which have been gathering dust in a succession of closets, basements and garages for a decade.   

Who wants ‘em?

I can tell you who doesn’t want them: my four children. 

In the unlikely-bordering-on-unfathomable event that one of my children should ever be overcome by the urge to hear, say, “Pull Over” (a catatonic acid house techno track, circa 1992, from Dutch electronic musician “Speedy J.”), I guarantee you that my kids—who don’t even know how to operate a CD player and can’t be bothered to learn— won’t be sifting through dad’s stack of CDs to find it. Instead, my sons or daughters will simply pluck the tune from one of the many clouds the song inhabits: Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, YouTube, wherever. 

To my kids, the notion of “owning” music or movies is antithetical. Entertainment content—and to some extent, knowledge itself—is increasingly becoming both ethereal and ephemeral: available on demand, discarded once its purpose is served, retrievable at some later date if desired. 

I now realize that until recently, with music, movies, books—and, in my professional life, data—I was a hoarder in the era of the sharer. I was stubbornly holding on to owning whereas my kids—and tens of millions of others born in the digital age—are perfectly satisfied with a loan. 

This is why I’m determined, in 2020 and beyond, to make every day “bring my child’s mindset to work day”.

At PepsiCo, where about 400 people worldwide work on the Insights team I lead, we were for many years hoarders—just like my colleagues at other large CPG companies who built similarly robust data-gathering and insights functions. 

The old model: Years’ worth of insights data—sometimes decades’ worth—was meticulously organized and stored, available for retrieval at some future date. Thousands of discrete data points were “parked”: on spreadsheets, in file folders, on shared drives, in data centers. All of it within arm’s reach. Almost none of it ever reached for, of course. The insights professional was being rewarded for having the data, and often labeled as smart just for knowing where to find it, and how to present it.

The new model: We now realize that the added value of the Insights team lies in the curation and integration of (often virtual) datasets, and in driving specific action from the insights we are able to extract from that data. While doing this, the insights team is morphing slowly but surely into an agile, always-on consumer centricity machine that drives value completely integrated with our business and brand teams. We don’t have to “own” data, “hoard” it or “control” it anymore; we merely need to access it and extract value from it. With the advent of technologies such as social data analytics, AI and blockchain we are in the process of evolving from the “capture and cage” insights model that defined our work for decades to the “catch and release” model that defines the way we interact with data today. 

A future case study: About a year ago, PepsiCo acquired SodaStream, a company that empowers consumers to create customized soft drinks at home. In the months and years ahead, we may discover, for example, that across a 100-country data set, goji berry has become the most popular flavoring agent in home-made soft drinks, which may beget dozens of even hundreds of future insights. The discovery may compel us to start monitoring an ongoing debate between two famous chefs over whose goji berry is superior: China’s or Britain’s … which in turn may influence future sourcing decisions … which in turn may inform new product development for our R&D team, which will be keen to develop a new snack whose taste wonderfully complements the goji berry’s tart and sour taste profile … which in turn may inform packaging cues. And so on.

In the shared data world, the implications for the business extend far beyond product development. Doors to exciting new adjacent businesses may open, too—the way pet food-maker MARS shrewdly entered the animal hospital business.

The days of hoarding are over and the days of sharing are here. 

And it feels liberating. I feel we can travel and work much lighter and focus our energy on what really builds competitive advantage: building our empathy for our consumers and activating that empathy into ever improving brands, products and services.