Deepening Data Capital Through Cloud-Based Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence - Wikibon Research

Business data is a capital asset. That's because, in a classical economic framework, data is a factor of production, is not depleted in the process of production, and gains value from human inputs, contributions, and sweat equity. As a capital asset, data's value goes far beyond the sunk cost of its physical instantiation in a database or even the cost of restoring if it were to be lost, stolen, or corrupted. Data's full value resides in the full range of potential business decisions, processes, engagements, and outcomes that it might support. And its value in those derives in great part on the data-driven insights that can be unlocked through analytic tools.