Barb Wixom and MIT CISR on managing data like a product

If data is the new oil, too many CIOs are still stuck building barrels instead of businesses. Despite steady investment in data platforms and governance, many organizations still struggle to extract lasting value from their data. According to Barb Wixom, principal research scientist at MIT Sloan’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) and co-author of Data Is Everybody’s Business, the answer isn’t more tools or talent. It’s a mindset shift: treating data as a product, the way information businesses do. 

Wixom traces the roots of her recent research brief back more than 25 years, to her time teaching in the University of Virginia’s MS program in the Management of IT. “Several students, leaders from data-savvy companies, kept pressing for real-world practices they could model,” she recalls. “They wanted examples they could put into action, but often came up short looking at traditional industries.” Her advice was simple and catalytic: “Study organizations whose entire business runs on data. Watch what they do, and you’ll see the future.” That challenge sparked decades of investigation into how information businesses master data, and what every other enterprise can learn from them. 

The case for managing data like a product 

In information businesses like comScore or LexisNexis, data isn’t just an input, it is the product. These companies succeed by creating reusable, scalable data assets, building solutions around them and monetizing the duo. “[In information businesses] you’ve always had owners for both the data asset and the solution,” Wixom explains. “They’re core strategic resources; these companies treat them as such.”