The digital economy has been an engine of growth for companies over the past decade. The digital sector grew an average of 5.6% annually between 2005 and 2016, even though the economy as a whole grew only 1.5%.

Part of that growth was fueled by cloud computing, which enabled new business models and new products, boosted efficiency in many parts of your business.

The cloud also lowered the cost of market entries for new players and profoundly changed consumer behaviour and their expectations. It is now easier than ever before to build and run once deemed complex applications like for example customer client portals, marketing automations and supply chain systems.

Great examples are companies like Salesforce. In 2011, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, was pioneering to make cloud computing and applications running in the cloud the new standaard for businesses worldwide. No software actually means: not no software, but cloud software only.

But the cloud is not only about software. The recent focus on infrastructure and applications means you have more data, better data and data can be analysed, exchanged and shared to enhance the customer experience and to build better products and services.
One of the key skills for tomorrow’s business leaders is to make data available where and when it’s needed so their team’s can make the right decisions for sustainable business growth.

During this learning path we will equip you with one of the essential skills for tomorrow’s leaders. You will learn what types of data you have to focus on, how to use data to build a customer centric organisation, how you can upskill your team to use data and the process of how data can fuel your company’s future growth.

Data is at the heart of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The next decade we will see tremendous disruptions in all parts of our life. Self driving cars, facial recognition, robotics, blockchain, IoT and even more people connected to the world wide web than ever before.
And smart businesses will start combining knowledge of biology, chemistry, nanotechnology, physics, material science, engineering, architecture and many more disciplines to achieve the unimaginable.

Data is at the very center and maybe a prerequisite to build the unimaginable.

“Whatever you think today is going to be wrong,” says Kava, the Vice President of Data Centers at Google. “The amount of compute power is beyond what we could have imagined a few years ago.”

What you as a leader have to know is the term hyperscale. As its name implies, hyperscale is all about achieving massive scale in computing—typically for big data or cloud computing.

Hyperscale operator CAPEX hits $100bn in the first three quarters of 2020.

Why are the big 6 heavily investing in hyperscale? And how can you make use of the technology for your business?

We will explain in detail during this learning journey how you as a leader can start harnessing the power of your data to fuel business growth by using the technology available today and anticipate the future developments and opportunities for your business.

Smart business decisions require that data has to be made available on-demand to employees throughout your business without friction or limitations.

The data has to be presented in a meaningful and understandable way so all levels of your organisation can profit from it.

One of your leadership tasks in the next decade is to turn “big data” into “big information” that lead to “big decisions” and ultimately “big business growth”.

Albert Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

During this learning journey you will first identify what business question needs to be answered with data.

The past 10 years has been about infrastrcuture systems and software. investments have been done in enterprise resource systems, CRM systems , workforce marketplaces, software as a service.

The result of all that development is that there is a tremendous amount of data. We are reaching zetabytes. = 1 trillion gigabytes.

First, you need to know all about technological developments. We mentioned cloud computing but there are many more you as a leader should know.