>> Announcer: Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCube, covering IBM Chief Data Officer's Summit, brought to you by IBM. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of the IBM CDO Strategy Summit here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. >> Hey, hey. We are joined by Gene Leganza, he is the vice president and research director at Forrester Research. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Pleasure, thanks for having me. >> So, before the cameras were rolling, we were talking about this transformation, putting data at the front and center of an organization, and you were saying how technology is a piece of the puzzle, a very important piece of the puzzle, but so much of this transformation involves these cultural, social, organizational politics issues that can be just as big and as onerous as the technology, and maybe bigger. >> Bigger in a sense that there can be intractable without any clear path forward. I was just in a session, at a breakout session, at the conference, as I was saying before, we could have had the same discussion 15 or 20 years ago in terms of how do you get people on board for things like data governance, things that sound painful and onerous to business people, something that sound like IT should take care of that, this is not something that a business person should get involved in. But the whole notion of the value of data as an asset to drive an organization forward, to do things you couldn't do before, to be either driven by insights, and if you're even advanced, AI, and cognitive sort of things, really advancing your organization forward, data's obviously very critical. And the things that you can do should be getting business people excited, but they're still having the same complaints about 20 years ago about this is something somebody should do for me. So, clearly the message is not getting throughout the organization that data is a new and fascinating thing that they should care about. There's a disconnect for a lot of organizations, I think. >> So, from your perspective, what is the push back? I mean, as you said, the fact that data is this asset should be getting the business guys' eyes lighting up. What do you see as sort of biggest obstacle and stumbling block here? >> I think it's easy to characterize the people we talk about. I came from IT myself, so the business is always the guys that don't get it, and in this case, the people who are not on board are somehow out of it, they're really bad corporate citizens, they're just not on board in some way that characterizes them as missing something. But I think what no one ever does who's in the position of trying to sell the value of data and data processes and data capabilities, is the fact that these folks are all doing their best to do their job. I mean, nobody thinks about that, right? They just think they're intractable, they like doing things the way they've always done them, they don't like change, and they're going to resist everything I try to do. But the fact is, from their perspective, they know how to be successful, and they know when risk is going to introduce something that they don't want to go there. It's unjustifiable risk. So the missing link is that no one's made that light bulb go off, to say, there is actually a good reason to change the way you've done things, right? And it's like, maybe it's in your best interest to do things differently, and to care more about something that sounds like IT stuff, like data governance, and data quality. So, that's why I think the chief data officer role, whether it's that title or chief analytics officer, or there's actually a chief artificial intelligence officer at the conference this time around, someone has to be the evangelist who can tell really meaningful stories. I mean, you know, 20 years ago, when IT was trying to convince the business that they should care more about data, data architects and DBAs could talk till they're blue in the face about why data was important. No one wanted to hear it. People get turned off even faster now than they did before, because they have a shorter attention span now than they did before. The fact is that somebody with a lot of credibility on the business side, people who kind of really believe it's capable of driving the business forward, hasta have a very meaningful message, not a half-hour wrap on why data is good for you, but what, specifically, can change in your business that you should want to change. I mean, basically, if you can't put it in terms of what's in it for me, why should they listen to you, right? And so yeah, you know, we've got this thing goin' on, it's really important, and everybody's behind it, and I can give you a list of people whose job title begins with C who really thinks that this is a really important idea, get right down to it, if it's not going to make their area of the business work better, or more efficiently, or, especially with, you know, top line growth sort of issues, they're not going to be that interested. And so it's the job of the person who's trying to evangelize these things to put it in those terms. And it might take some research, it certainly would take some in-depth business knowledge about what happens in that area of the business, you can't give an example from another industry or even another company. You've got to go around and find out what's broken, and talk about what can be fixed, you have to have some really good ideas about what can be innovative in very material terms. One of the breakout sessions I had earlier today, well, they're all around how you define new data products, and get innovative, and very interesting to hear some of the techniques by the folks who'd been successful there, down to, you know, it was somebody's job to go around, and when I say somebody, I don't mean a flunky, I need a chief analytics officer sort of person, talking to people about, you know, what did they hate about their job. Finding, collecting all the things that are broken, and thinking about what could be my best path forward to fix something that's going to get a lot of attention, that I can actually build a marketing message here about why everybody should care about this. And so, the missing link is really not seeing the value in changing behaviors. >> So one of the things that I've always respected about George Colony is he brings people into Forrester that care about social, cultural, organizational issues, not just technology. One of your counterparts, Doug Laney, just wrote a book called Infonomics. You mighta seen it on Twitter, there's a little bit of noise going around it. Premise of the book is essentially that organization shouldn't wait for the accounting industry to tell them how to value data. They should take it upon themselves, and he went into a lot of very detailed, you know, kind of mind-numbing calculations and ways to apply it. But there's a real cultural issue there. First of all, do you buy the premise, and what are you seeing in your client base in terms of the culture of data first, data value, and understanding data value? >> Really good question, really good question. And I do follow what Doug Laney does. Actually, Peter Burris, who you folks know, a long time ago, when he was at Forrester, said, "You know what Doug Laney is doing? "We better be doing that sort of thing." So he brought my attention to it a long time ago. I'm really glad he's working on that area, and I've been in conversations with him at other conferences, where people get into those mind-numbing discussions about the details and how to measure the value of data and stuff, and it's a really good thing that that is going on, and those discussions have to happen. To link my answer to that to answer to your second part of your question about what am I seeing in our client base, is that I'm not seeing a technical answer about how to value data in the books, in a spreadsheet, in some counting rules, going to be the differentiator. The missing link has not been that we haven't had the right rules in place to take X terabytes of data and turn it into X dollars of assets on the books. To me, the problem with that point of view is just that there is data that will bring you gold, and there's data that'll sit there, and it's valuable, but it's not really all that valuable. You know, it's a matter of what do you do with it. You know, I can have a hunk of wood on this table, and it's a hunk of wood, and how much it is, you know, what kind of wood is it and how much does it cost. If I make something out of it that's really valuable to somebody else, it'll cost something completely different based on what its function is, or its value as an art piece or whatever it might be. So, it's so much the product end of it. It's like, what do you do with it, and whether there's an asset value in terms of how it supports the business, in terms of got some regular reporting, but where all the interest is at these days, and why there's a lot of interest in it is like, okay, what are we missing about our business model that can be different, because now that everything's digitized, there are products people aren't thinking of. There are, you know, things that we can sell that may be related to our business, and somehow it's not even related our business, it's just that we now have this data, and it's unique to us, and there's something we can do with it. So the value is very much in terms of who would care about this, and what can I do with it to make it into an analytics product, or, you know, at very least I've got valuable data, I think this is how people tend to think of monetizing data, I've got valuable data, maybe I can put it somewhere people will download it and pay me for it. It's more that I can take this, and then from there do something really interesting with it and create a product, or a service, it's really it's on an app, it's on a phone, or it's on a website, or it's something that you deliver in person, but is giving somebody something they didn't have before. >> So what would you say, from your perspective, what are the companies that are being the most innovative at creating new data products, monetizing, creating new analytics products? What are they doing? What are the best practices of those companies from your perspective? >> You know, I think the best practice of those companies are they've got people who are actively trying to answer the question of, what can I do with this that's new, and interesting, and innovative. I'd say, in the examples I've seen, there been more small to medium companies doing interesting things than really, really huge companies. Or if they're huge companies, they're pockets of huge companies. It's kind of very hard to kind of institutionalize at the enterprise level. It's when you have somebody who gets it about the value of data, working to understand the business at a detailed level enough to understand what might be valuable to somebody in that business if I have a product, is when the magic can potentially happen. And what I've heard people doing are things like that hackathons, where in order to kind of surface these ideas, you get a bunch of folks who kind of get technology and data together with folks who get the business. And they play around with stuff, and they're matching the data to the business problem, comin' up with really kind of cool ideas. Those kind of things tend to happen on a smaller scale. You don't have a hackathon, as far as I can tell, with a couple thousand people in a room. It's usually a smaller sort of operation, where people are digging this up. So, it's folks who kind of get it, because they've been kind of working to find the value in analytics, and it's where there's pockets of people who're kind of working together with the business to make it happen. The profile is such that it's organizations that tend to be more mature about data. They're not complaining that data is something IT should take care of for me. They've kind of been there 10 years ago, or five years ago even, and they've gotten at a point where they actually wanted to move forward from defense and do some offensive playing. They're looking for those kind of cool things to do. So, they're more mature, certainly, than folks who aren't doing it. They're more agile and nimble, I think, than your typical organization in the sense of they can build cross disciplinary teams to make this happen, and that's really where the magic happens. You don't get a genius in the room to come up with this, you get this combination of technical skills, and data knowledge, and data engineering skills, and business smarts all in the same room, and that might be four or five different people to kind of brainstorm until they kind of come up with this. And so the folks who recognize that problem, make that happen, regardless of the industry, regardless of the size of the company, are where it's actually happening. >> I know we have to go, but I wanted to ask you, what about the IBM scorecard in terms of how they're doing in that regard? >> You know, I want to talk to them more. From what they said, you know, in a day, you hear a lot of talk, it's been a long day of hearing people talk about this. It sounds pretty amazing, you know, and I think, actually, we had a half hour session with Inderpal after his keynote, I'm going to get together with him more, and hear more about what's going on under the covers, 'cause it sounds like they're being very effective in kind of making this happen at the enterprise level. And I think that's the unusual thing. I mean, IBM is a huge, huge place. So the notion that you can take these cool ideas and make them work in pockets is one thing. Trying to make it enterprise class, scalable, cognitive-driven organization, with all the right wheels in motion to the data, and analytics, and process, and business change, and operating model change, is kind of amazing. From what I've heard so far, they're actually making it happen. And if it's really, really true, it's really amazing. So it makes me want to hear more, certainly, I have no reason to doubt that what they're saying is happening is happening, I just would love to hear just some more of the story. >> Yeah, you're making us all want to hear more. Well, thanks so much, Gene. It's been a pleasure-- >> Not a problem. >> having you on the show. >> A pleasure. >> Thanks. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Dave Vellante, we will have more from the CDO Summit just after this. (upbeat music)