The Chief Data Officer Rises. Your C-Suite Needs a Chief Data Officer - Anthony Goldbloom and Merav Bloch. By Anthony Goldbloom and Merav Bloch | 7:00 AM October 16, 2012 In the closing decade of the twentieth century, Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. showed the world that elephants can dance by turning around IBM, a mammoth if ever there was one. Part of his winning formula was in functional centralization, appointing the company’s first Chief Marketing Officer — in function if not in name. Two decades later, it’s time for corporations to embrace a new functional member of the C-suite: the Chief Data Officer (CDO). Big data is enjoying unprecedented attention, with more than $1 billion invested in it in the last year alone. Enter the Chief Data Officer. Identifying how data can be used to support the company’s most important priorities.
In fact, data can assist most business decision-making — from the tactical (Which items should I bundle?) The CDO’s most important role would be to understand when business units should be looking for answers in the company’s data. This is easier said than done. Get Responsibility for Data Out of IT - Thomas C. Redman. By Thomas C. Redman | 12:00 PM October 22, 2012 As companies devote increasing time and energy in gathering massive quantities of data, many neglect a critical first step: Get most responsibility for data out of the IT Department.
I’ve reached this conclusion after years working with clients — both on the business side and in technology — carefully observing the ways data help organizations create value, as well as in discussions with other experts (I’ve won at least a few over). And a recent academic report concurs. Since this step flies in the face of most current practice and may seem counterintuitive, I want to explain carefully. First, it seems obvious enough that one ought to put management of data (or anything else for that matter) as close to the action as possible. In a somewhat different vein, management responsibility should lie with the parties that have the most to gain or lose. Nor does IT feel the pain when the data is wrong. None of this is really news. Government designed for new times | Government designed for new times. The Commons as a Transformative Vision. By David Bollier & Silke Helfrich of The Commons Strategy Group, It has become increasingly clear that we are poised between an old world that no longer works and a new one struggling to be born.
Surrounded by an archaic order of centralized hierarchies on the one hand and predatory markets on the other, presided over by a state committed to planet-destroying economic growth, people around the world are searching for alternatives. That is the message of various social conflicts all over the world – of the Spanish Indignados and the Occupy movement, and of countless social innovators on the Internet. People want to emancipate themselves not just from poverty and shrinking opportunities, but from governance systems that do not allow them meaningful voice and responsibility. This book is about how we can find the new paths to navigate this transition. But since there is no path forward, we must make the path. The Occupy Movement saw citizens rise up in search of answers and alternatives.