Enabling a Data-Centric Innovation Capability: Doing Stuff Better with Data

The jury’s still out on whether you can generate innovation, but there is evidence suggesting you can stifle it. Here is a data management strategy to remove impediments slowing innovation.

The volume and availability of data continue to increase. So does the crowd of tools for analyzing it. And there’s no shortage of ideas for what we can do with it all. There are skilled data scientists, data wranglers, and innovators in every large enterprise. If there are no magic “new ideas” dust to sprinkle, what can we do draw the straightest line from data to idea to validation? How can we ensure appropriate access to the right data and tools for skilled data professionals and developers? By acknowledging this shift in organizational thinking, and pivoting from command and control to broad transparency, guidance, and facilitation, data professionals can catalyze far more creativity and innovation than we’ve ever been able to before.

Bill Brooks has been modeling, managing, and integrating data since 1995, beginning at CID Associates developing application databases, then at Children's Hospital Boston as manager of the Decision Support Systems Group. He managed data integration before becoming Enterprise Data Architect for MFS Investment Management. Bill is now Global Chief Data Architect at Mercer, where he is developing a firm-wide data architecture practice.

Bill's background includes traditional relational database design, data warehouse design and implementation, and enterprise application integration using a variety of ETL, message broker, and service bus approaches, and he has recently focused on building Data Architecture capabilities and driving big data and advanced analytics programs.