It’s fascinating how very quickly most of today’s tech giants have moved from start-up’s to world domination (see image below of largest market cap companies 2010 and 2020).
A few years ago the Economist published an article describing the similarities between this development and the growth of giant oil companies during the earlier part of the 20th century. The main topic of the article is how to ensure a competitive market. But it is interesting to note that this time the hot new commodity (data) is an abstraction created by humans, not a natural resource such as oil. Let’s hope that means resource scarcity will be less of a problem and that data can be a source of prosperity all over the world. In other words, you or your company probably have access to unique and valuable data. Try to make use of it.
