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Flagging gaps emerging from rising stature of data in business

Thursday, January 23, 2020 — updated on September 20, 2020 - 6 min read

Bright Simons, president of mPedigree, a multinational technology and social innovation enterprise known for its anti-counterfeiting, digital supply chain, and agritech platforms and services. PHOTO | FAUSTINE NGILA

By FAUSTINE NGILA

Right Simons is the president of mPedigree, a multinational technology and social innovation enterprise known for its anti-counterfeiting, digital supply chain, and agritech platforms and services.

Recently, his technical paper A Farewell to Disruption in a Post-Platform World, published by the Centre for Global Development (CGD), drew global attention for its audacity to question common narratives in the technology world such as ‘data is the new oil’ and ‘Big Data is everything’.

There has been a substantial growth in awareness about the potential of data to confer power on those who can hoard it. Like all forms of power, data concentration is subject to abuse. Globally, new public institutions are being created to enforce emerging regulations against the abuse of data. It is no longer useful to just amass data. You need inter-sectional and multi-sectoral data, often held by very different entities in highly diverse repositories. The ability to harness data to serve broader public interest, economically valuable, and socially transformative purposes is hampered by this diffuse conflict. Unless new alliances are created to back civic and non-corporatist responses to this problem, startup and leapfrogging style innovation in the developing will be greatly dampened.