From Brexit to Trump: How organizations and data prepare for and respond to political events

As the Big Data London event coincided with a new development in the Brexit story, back-stage discussions could not possibly have remained unaffected. In some cases they even took to the center stage, going as far as panelist Kim Nilsson from Pivigo who has been quoted to say that "if we have a hard Brexit, the data industry is going to die". The newly elected US president has drawn parallels between himself and the Brexit movement, so even though comparing leaving a federated union of nations and changing head of state is like comparing apple pie to Marmite, looking at what organizations can do using data to cope with political change may be of relevance. Predictions are always hard, no matter how much data you have. Predictions are hard, especially about the future.