Banquet of Consequences

Data as liability

There's a lot of motivation to find value in data and prove its worth as an asset to the organization. But there's a flip side to that coin. If the data has value, then it has the potential to be a liability in the same way it is an asset.

Maybe the value of data could be better assessed by characterizing how the data is a liability, rather than how the data is an asset?

How much did it cost to collect?

...to quality check?

...to curate?

...to store?

...to access?

...to secure?

...Imagine that you make a decision and the evidence that it was a mistake is in the data?

No wonder startup tech companies don't really invest in their data -- as a liability, they can't afford it.