The Data Product Ecosystem - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 177

DISCUSS
In a vacuum, analysis and insight amounts to little. But when those results are
discussed and debated, they have the potential to be acted upon. Data must
get mixed with people.
The best data ecosystems don't simply assume discussions will occur. They
encourage discussions through mechanisms for sharing, capturing, and saving
information and insights. The discoveries found in the data are treated as pre-
cious assets—after all, they are the purpose of all the effort put into creating
data products. Finally, the ecosystem should encourage people to take action
when the discussion is complete.
Some organizations consider data products a one-way information broadcast.
They implicitly assume that a dashboard is intended to deliver an information
result, not drive an action.
Consider the evolution of television and its audiences as an analogy. Before
the pervasiveness of social media, television was a powerful medium for
telling a story, but there was little room for engaging the audience beyond
the broadcast. “Water cooler” conversations sometimes occurred after a big
event with spiked TV rankings—when J.R. was shot or after the last episode
of “M.A.S.H.” While there are some examples of early fan engagement via let-
ter writing and call-in voting, generally the focus was always on the one-way
delivery of a show to a broad audience.
Now things are different. TV shows have to build stronger connections with
smaller audiences. To do so, the broadcast is only the beginning of the con-
versation. Loyal fans and TV critics write detailed reviews of every episode.
Theories and predictions are hashed out on fan discussion boards. The analysis
and collective synthesis of the TV show deepens the audience's understanding
and engagement with the content. It took many years for television executives
to appreciate and want to foment audience discussion. Now it is a crucial ele-
ment in a TV show's success.
OBJECTIVE
An ecosystem that encourages discussion first needs the capability to capture
insights found in data products. No user is an island; they need to take useful
information they find and share it, with the context in which they found it.
We call this concept snapshots . If an effective data product is a guided safari