While passive data gathering can be useful, measurement is far more valuable when coupled with conscious, active experimentation and sharing of insights. Likewise, the value of undertaking the experiments themselves is proportionately greater if the organization can capitalize on those experiments in more locations and at greater scale. In combination, these practices constitute a new kind of “R&D” that draws on the strengths of digitization to speed innovation.

Available massive amounts of data paired with cheap processing power will boost the experimentation and learning dramatically, as the microscope did. But having witnessed the great organizational inertia when it came to rely on the results from e g Finite Element analysis instead of extremely expensive physical testing - and in my experience it was full scale car crash tests - I am hesitant to think that this will have impact on how traditional organizations do things. I can rather see that universities, entrepreneurs and skilled amateurs will provide the lion part of the growth in this area. The innovation story will then mainly be written by small research groups or curious individuals who have an idea that they will try out in an experiment with a huge body of real data. And some of them will find definitely strike gold…

via futuramb: