From Microsoft to Self-Driving Cars, Invention Springs From Data

Source: www.adweek.com --- Sunday, August 21, 2016
In June, Microsoft bought LinkedIn, one of the largest acquisitions in the history of tech, and it boils down to one thing: data. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said as much in a letter to employees . Nadella wants to marry LinkedIn with its flagship software, Office 365, and crucially its CRM product Dynamics. Since the acquisition, we've started seeing how Microsoft will bolster Dynamics against rivals like Oracle. Microsoft—and we learned, a handful of other companies—recognized the potential of LinkedIn's customer data to improve its own products and sales, and LinkedIn understood that its real value as a company was the trove of data it collects. Peter Reinhardt   Alex Fine Microsoft's acquisition reflects a new reality for software: a beautiful app, user interface or even becoming the leading professional social network no longer guarantees long-term success. Market dominance comes down to how customers use the product, and then, especially, how companies interpret that usage and feed it back into the experience to innovate and invent. You can't build truly lasting businesses—or put another way, create an impenetrable competitive advantage—without capturing, analyzing and activating vast amounts of first-party data. Product data has become the new software. Leading companies have analysts, product managers, designers and developers poring over data to make decisions that will improve the customer experience. Today's products a ...

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