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Welcome to the Age of Disruption

Introduction

There have been a few times in history which have ushered in a period of great change. We are in the midst of one of them, in which communications and the network has become cheap or free and is influencing changes for the foreseeable future. Some of the changes we are witnessing are the mobilization of the public, a shift in how marketing is performed and the importance of information.

The purpose of this writing is to discuss how information is weaved into this age of disruption and discuss what can be done to thrive in an economy fraught with change for the foreseeable future.

Figure 1 | The scope of the change, InfoSight Partners, 2016

If history is any predictor, change will take place over generations, not years

Figure 2 | The four phases of the Industrial Revolution, InfoSight Partners, 2016, The fourth Industrial Revolution, Schwab, 2016

2 | P a g e | W e l c o m e t o t h e A g e o f D i s r u p t i o n If we look at the industrial revolution, there have been four phases of the industrial revolution, dating back to the discovery of the cotton gin and mechanization of production, which brought on colonialism and the separation of the independence of countries from the European giants, such as the thirteen colonies. Each phase has been buffered by a period of 8 to 10 years of downturn. If history is any predictor, we are winding up the downturn period which was ushered in by the banking crisis of 2008.

We should expect the next three generations to be a period of great disruption. In this period of disruption, information is the great enabler, and companies who understand how to wield information will be the victors through the next three generations and beyond. Whether there is a fifth industrial revolution or whether the great changes brought to bear by the digitized word (the telephone and telegraph, while not digitized services, are included for this purpose as part of the journey towards the digitized word).

In the Age of Disruption, information is the great enabler

In the digital economy, many products are digitized (Uber, AirBnB, etc.), in they manage information by serving as a broker to the products they sell. Many processes are digitized, in that they are automated and run without human intervention. The only way the digital products and processes work is to have excellence in the information utilized for digital products and processes.

Exactly what does it mean to have information excellence?

• It is clearly not to have the most information, information that does not serve to digital products and processes or enable processes and products not digitized is clutter, and can indeed detract from information excellence.

• It is clearly not having information for which the breath and scope of the information is obfuscated. Again, not having the necessary supporting information, mostly metadata and reference data, detracts from information excellence.

• It is clearly not having information whose trustworthiness is suspect. Information whose trustworthiness is suspect cannot be consumed without first validating its relevance and accuracy,, which is not possible with digitized products and processes.

• It is clearly not having information which is out of reach when it is needed. • It is clearly not having information which is irrelevant to what is needed. • It is clearly not having information which is too old to be useful. • It is clearly not having information which is not aligned to the processes that need to consume

it. Particularly in digitized products and processes, information must be in a form that is directly consumable by these products and processes at the time the transactions are created by these products and processes.

All of these factors are resistance to facilitating information as a great enabler.

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Figure 3 Information Resistance Sources, InfoSight Partners, 2016

Thriving in the Age of Disruption with information excellence

In order to have information excellence, the information must be treated be valued by the organization, meaning that it must be treated as an organizational asset managed by a profit center of the organization. What is missing in many organizations is how to measure the value of information so it can be valued and the processes supporting the care and feeding of information be financially self-supporting.

Just as patents and trademarks, information is an intangible asset of the organization. And just like patents and trademarks, the value of information is indeed measurable. There are some factors, however which make information assets interesting.

• Information is non-depleting. Up to the point of expiration, information can be consumed as many times as necessary. And each process that consumes information results in some information value that is measurable.

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• Information has a half-life. While some information is viable for considerable lengths of time, some information loses its value rather quickly (i.e., Equity price information has significant value for a very short period of time and approaches a value of zero within 15 minutes.

• Information and data are not synonymous. Up to now we have managed information based on the source and focused more on information sourced internally rather than information consumable by business processes. Internally generated information is not sufficient to identify and dispense with disruptions, as it must cycle through internal processes in order to serve information about the disruption, and by that time it may indeed be too late. A map of what information is required for business process and a shift to organize data based on its consumption rather than its sourcing is required to be viable in the age of disruption. This map will be a product of the Chief Data Officer (CDO), who is accountable to optimizing the value of the organization’s information assets.

• While it is possible to measure the value of information assets using a mathematical formula, there are too many soft computations in the formulas to make the results defensible. It is therefore much more viable to measure information value similar to the approach used for royalties, namely a pre-determined value split is assigned to the intersections of information, business process and those who consume information (actors).

Figure 4 Orchestrated information valuation process, InfoSight Partners, LLC, 2016

5 | P a g e | W e l c o m e t o t h e A g e o f D i s r u p t i o n In order to thrive in the age of disruption, an orchestrated process which uses a blueprint devised by the Chief Data Officer to record potential information value is used to value requests for information by business processes. It is this orchestrated process that will be the engine to apply value to the information assets of an organization and fuel the engine to keep the alignment of information to business processes in this highly disruptive period of history we reside in.

Future writings

Future writings in this series will focus on aspects of the age of disruption in which we live, and how to use the information assets of an organization as a catalyst to thrive.

About the Author Mark Albala is the President of InfoSight Partners, LLC, a business consultancy which provides financial and technology advisory services devised to facilitate focus into the value of information assets. InfoSight Partners is led by Mark Albala, who has served in technology and thought leadership roles and serves as an advisor to analyst organizations and Lynn Albala, an officer of the NJ State Society of CPAs (who leads the financial advisory services offered by InfoSight Partners, LLC). Mark can be reached at mark@infosightpartners.com.