Structured intelligence: five key points

My key points

• Alternative data has become essential. A digital economy produces large volumes of data outside firms as well as inside them – company filings, industry association disclosures, satellite imagery – and it lets us nowcast macroeconomic variables that official indices report only with a lag. The value lies not just in the data but in the analysis layered on it. ¹
• Real-time signals reward creative use. What data was published for and what you can use it for are often different things: FASTag toll collections, published at the plaza level, show how products move within the country and how local economies are doing. You are limited mostly by your own imagination. ²
• Corporate and public work run on different clocks. A corporate has one stakeholder and one return-on-equity goal; public policy must balance many stakeholders, which stretches time cycles, and in exchange the canvas for change is significantly wider. ³
• Conversation with AI is the near-term superpower. Getting the right information, analysis and action out of AI still takes good human interaction, and knowing the underlying data the AI runs on matters just as much. ⁴
• Creativity with data remains a human trait. AI's access to large data does not by itself produce the best output, and balance among competing priorities – for yourself, your team and your ecosystem – is what the work is directed towards. ⁵