MIT Sloan Management Review

Management of Technology and Innovation

 

Data as a Resource: Properties, Implications, and Prescriptions

By Anany V. Levitin and Thomas C. Redman

October 15, 1998

Managers must think about and manage data differently in order to take advantage of this underutilized resource.

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In recent years, many studies have examined how leading corporations are better utilizing information and knowledge.1 Less noticed has been the management of data, “the sludge of the information age — stuff that no one has yet thought very much about.”2 Yet data are ubiquitous. Almost every activity in which an enterprise engages requires data.

Data are used in, and created by, all daily operations, from serving a customer, to manufacturing a product, to tracking inventory. Data support managerial and professional work. Data are the critical inputs into almost all decisions, at all levels of an enterprise. Through data, managers learn about an organization’s human and financial resources. Data may be combined in almost unlimited ways in the search for new opportunities, market niches, process improvements, and innovative products and services.

Because data implicitly define common terms like “customer,” they contribute to an organization’s culture. They “fill the white space” in the organization chart. Enterprises strive to convert tacit knowledge into data. For example, a salesperson may have a warm personal relationship with an important customer. But, for the enterprise as a whole to serve that customer, certain aspects of the relationship must be expressed in data.3

Not surprisingly, most companies readily admit that they should manage data as business... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

 
 

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