The Visual Organization: ZDNet Interview

Brian Sommer interviewed me for ZDNet about the new book. Here's an excerpt:

Brian: Your book makes big data and visualization as part of a quest for firms to find better insights. Why the word “quest”? Do you see the search for insights as a never ending challenge? Is it because the competitive landscape (and the fickle nature of consumers) is increasingly more fluid?

Phil: I’m glad that you picked up on that. You’re right. It is a quest. The days of “set it and forget it” are rapidly coming to a close. Many of us yearn for a simpler time. As Ray Kurzweil notes, we are living in an era of accelerating technological change. Insights today may no longer be accurate in a month. It’s imperative upon professionals to question long-standing standard reports, KPIs, dashboards, and traditional reporting tools. Yes, they’re still relevant, but they no longer can tell the whole story. What’s more, they don’t allow for true data discovery, especially with respect to vast amounts of unstructured data.

Read the whole thing here.