The Electric Possibilities of Big Data

"It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers."
—James Thurber

The era of Big Data allows companies and their employees to address previously unanswerable questions. It's one of the central points in both of The Visual Organization and Too Big to Ignore.

This is doubly true for organizations that develop interactive dataviz tools—the types that free non-technical employees from having to formally request reports from the IT department. As I know from personal experience, this is often a frustrating and laborious process that introduces superfluous friction, not to mention wastes valuable time.

Ever with the addition of just one relatively large external data source can significantly improve an organization's ability to answer key questions and fill in key gaps.

An Electric Example