The last year has shown the value of innovative uses of data and analytics, as companies shifted to accommodate rapidly changing circumstances. At the same time, other firms struggled to keep up, with some wrestling with issues of how to gather, use, and manage data. "The gap has widened between those who are leaders in analytics and those who are laggards," according to Cindi Howson, chief data strategy officer at analytics platform provider ThoughtSpot. At the recent MIT CDOIQ Symposium, Howson outlined six trends in data, analytics, and artificial intelligence that can help orient data leaders in a shifting landscape. COVID-19 forced companies to react and pivot quickly to stay afloat. Now it's time for firms to be more strategic and intentional about where they focus innovation and investment efforts, Howson said.

Technology industry veterans Tom Davenport and Tom Seibel have seen firsthand how data, analytics and artificial intelligence have changed business models over the past three decades. In a conversation with ThoughtSpot Chief Data Strategy Officer Cindi Howson at VentureBeat's Transform 2021 conference on Tuesday, Davenport and Siebel shared their insights into how technology has boosted innovation and how it can transform industries, as well as the dangers it presents. Davenport said the biggest change he's seen in his career has been the democratization of technology. "There's been a continual move toward the software being easier to use, and being able to do more things on its own -- automated analytics, automated data science, automated machine learning," Davenport said. "I think we're poised for even more democratization, which is great. I think overall there's some issues that it raises, but it really opens up this field to a lot more people who may not have been nerdy enough to study statistics and get into the details of how you create various models."

With the research showing growth and transformation are the top priorities for their organisations, this puts technology leaders and the exploitation of data capabilities at the heart of digital business agendas. The research also found that data analytics was the area where technology leaders expected their investments to grow the fastest, and is only behind cybersecurity for where the most technology investment is going in the coming year. Members of the Technology Leaders Agenda 2021 advisory panel of CIOs and CTOs said that after years of hype around AI, innovations in the data ecosystem had finally reached enterprise maturity. As such, it was no surprise that AI and automation initiatives are increasingly being implemented. "AI and automation are now solidly delivering the use cases and value promised three years ago," says Nadine Thomson, global CTO at MediaCom.