Building the Experimental Enterprise
February 5th, 2014
What does it mean to be data-driven? It’s not about finding analytical fairy dust that you can sprinkle to make everything better, but a deep-rooted approach to operations, innovation and competition. Creating an organization designed for data-informed decision—the experimental enterprise—is the key to competing in a world that’s being rapidly digitized.
At Silicon Valley Data Science, our mission is to bring the best approaches from the successful data driven Silicon Valley companies into every business, and the experimental enterprise is at the heart of our thinking.
Download the full report to understand how data, technology and management work together to create the experimental enterprise.
Overview—Software is Eating the World: Don’t Let It Eat You
What makes large web companies such as Google so successful? It’s the data. More specifically, the ability to iterate and adapt in response to learning from data. As a result of this approach being deployed at scale, we’ve seen a raft of technology emerging from leading web companies, as they build environments that are constantly innovating and optimizing. Cloud, DevOps, big data: all owe their genesis to agility at scale.
As the tide of digitization rises, every industry sector is poised to be transformed by the ability to experiment rapidly. Digital manufacture such as 3D printing has commoditized prototyping and product development. Mobile has put every business in direct contact with their customers. The Internet of Things promises an unprecedented flood of data and the ability to manipulate processes and environment.
Digitization rapidly accelerates the pace of change in the marketplace, bringing with it new players who use newly available visibility and agility to disrupt the competitive landscape. The ability to experiment has become an imperative for today’s companies who wish to play a part in tomorrow’s market. Thus we see also the rise of big data: the way to make sense and take advantage of digitally native environments is through data science, that potent combination of big data, analytics and software development.
Although digitization is unquestionably an issue for the entire company, it places a laser focus on the IT organization. For many years, IT has played the role of “faster paper”, automating processes and ultimately being a cost center. In a digitized marketplace, IT must adapt to a role where it underpins strategic advantage. This is not an incremental change, but a radical reassessment. No wonder that it has been easier for the startups, who work from a clean slate.
Yet it is possible to bring the adaptive qualities of Silicon Valley startups to broader business. That’s what we call building the “experimental enterprise”— a company whose infrastructure is designed to make experimentation possible and efficient.
Download the full report to understand how data, technology and management work together to create the experimental enterprise, or read it online over at Forbes.com.
