Presentation on 'Rise of the Datavores' at the Innovate UK conference, 13 March 2013.

1. Rise of the Datavores
Juan Mateos-Garcia
13th March 2013

2. Context
DATA THE NEW OIL
THE NEXT FRONTIER
THE GREAT LEVELLER
The big innovation story of our time

3. Context
Remarkably data free discussions about adoption, benefits & best
practices, beyond case studies, rarely looking at the UK.
WE NEED MORE & BETTER DATA (AND ANALYSIS!) ABOUT
DATA

4. Our Research
Data
Survey of 500 UK
Are UK companies companies > 50
adopting data-driven
management &
employees, active
online. Analysis
innovation? We look at Online
customer data
Action
What are the (More than web
impacts, good analytics; not just
practices and about the website)
barriers?
Impact

5. Our findings
We have found…
The Datavores
Businesses that rely on data
and analysis over experience
and intuition when they make
decisions about how to grow
their sales
We have also identified
businesses that do the
opposite…let’s call them…
the dataphobes

6. These two are the ying and yang of Data
Most datavores are
comprehensive in their
data collection.
Dataphobes less so.

7. Datavores sweat their data
Datavores use advanced
methods (experiments,
statistics, prediction) ,
dataphobe mostly
retrospective reporting.

8. …put it to work…
Datavores not only use
data to fix the website – it
pervades the
organisation, including in
strategy & product
development

9. …and they reap the benefits
Datavores are 4 times as likely to say
data generates substantial benefits in
their business.
They are also more innovative in
products & processes

10. In spite of all of this…The datavores are in the minority!
18% Datavores compared to
43% of Dataphobes

11. What is going on?
The dataphobes in our sample are commercially active online
(generating, on average, 13% of their revenues there).
On average, they employ 419 people (median 154)
They appear to have the incentives and the capacity…
…Yet it looks like they
have decided
to give the online data
revolution a pass
http://www.blackhawknrhs.org/home.htm

12. WHY?
Becoming a datavore isn’t free
The investments need to be made today, the benefits happen in the
future – Better leave it for tomorrow, wait for others to take the lead??
Sources: http://www.squidoo.com/science-coloring-pages http://kalyan-city.blogspot.com/2010/06/organisation-
organizational-structure.html; Believekin (Flickr).

13. The way forward
MORE & BETTER DATA (AND
ANALYSIS!) ABOUT DATA could
help to:
• Understand where are the
bottlenecks (inputs, policy &
tech) to more effective uses of
data
• Also where are the limits.
• Measure benefits to encourage
adoption & consider trade-offs.
• …and identify good practices to
make adoption smooth

14. will be addressing some of the issues in
the coming months.
Thank You
Juan.mateos-garcia@nesta.org.uk