How our data revolution follows the industrial revolution
As we approach a quarter of the way into the 21st century, more and more parallels arise between the turn of this century and the last. Glossing over the great influenza, the early 1900's were an exciting time of growth and advancement. The remnants of the industrial revolution began shaping the world in ways no one could expect. There were mass migrations of people from rural areas to the cities as factories and skyscrapers symbolized a new era. The turning wheels of industry changed everything for the coming century.
Our turn of the century gifted us with a similar paradigm shift. Building on the information age, the internet and the growth of digital industries is providing us with the same excitement and growth. There has been another mass migration to those cities that cultivate this new frontier, like Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Auston. It is not Generative AI and it is not blockchain, but something simpler.
Our century is being built on data while the 20th century was built on industry. Data has become our black gold. Like the Industrial revolution formed the world of the early 20th century, the information age is shaping ours. Looking at the results of the Industrial revolution, factories and production lines became the status quo. The pressures from competition forced companies to strive for the same economies of scale or die out. We can look forward to our century and see that those businesses with data will force every business to adapt in the same way. In the coming years, business intelligence and artificial intelligence will be the status quo.
Those that grasp the coming changes will be in the best position to adapt and profit from them. The most prominent parallel of this between our century and the last is Jeff Bezos and Henry Ford. Both clearly saw the new world emerging and pushed the limits of that movement. In many respects, both shaped what that new world looked like. For the rest of us, we parallel the masses migrating to the cities. Immigrants coming to New York at the turn of the 20th century thought gold could be found in the streets. We are in the same boat, migrating to jobs in blockchain, AI, software, prompt engineering, data and analytics in the hopes of striking gold.
Most importantly, those that do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Those looking on at blockchain and generative AI and saying it's just a fad will find themselves passed by. Using the turn of the 20th century as a guide, there are several things we can expect to happen over the next 100 years. Data will become foundational to a business as did machinery in the industrial revolution. In some ways we already see this: the value of a customer record. Another obvious progression from history will be regulation. As the factories grew so did the programs designed to protect the people in them. This is a bit more complicated with data as there will be moves to protect the users of data (restrictions on replacing workers with AI) and the people that the data represents (right to privacy laws).
Managing organizations will progress in a similar way as well. The Harvard MBA was created in 1908 to help train a new set of leaders in the industrialized world. We will see business statistics become essential in the C suite and the boardroom. If you doubt this, you should be very concerned about your future relevance in a leadership position. Leaders will need the ability to understand basic business intelligence reports and the way they are calculated. I've already seen too many times the impact of poorly devised metrics. They do not drive growth nor profitability and lead down a road to nowhere. At the same time, the leaders with bonuses tied to these metrics can land considerable payouts without helping, and in some cases hurting, the business.
All of this is to say, understanding the importance of, manipulation of, and reporting of data is the number one skill for the 21st century. No matter your role, title, department or industry, understanding data is paramount to success. Additionally, expect further novel uses of data and additional regulation over the next quarter century.