I was reading a Fast Company’s article about Google and was reminded of Douglas Bowman’s blog post on the day he resigned from Google. “Data eventually become a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.”
Clearly what he's referring to is the left brain, linear, logical, sequential side of "data." And in that definition, I am in complete agreement. Data can tell you what worked and what didn’t and lead to incremental optimizations. If you’re lucky, it may even point you toward at a larger opportunity. But the key shortcoming is that data is backward looking – and with it comes limitations to moving forward boldly.
But I subscribe to a broader definition of "data" to encompass more than hard numbers. The real breakthroughs come when we embrace the squishy, messy, right-brain aspect of data gathering -- beyond the 1's and 0's. That's where you can really get beyond the “what” and into the “why.” There's no spreadsheet or algorithm for it. Messy means getting out there and talking to your customers and ideally following them around in their daily lives to get a deeper understanding of what delights and amuses as well as what frustrates and frightens them.
It's not an either/or decision, and it's not about villanizing the quant and to glorify the qual (or vice versa). I embrace them both equally. It depends on what you're solving for. But when it comes to finding the game changers, the only way to go is to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.
