[mejutoco]

I believe everything else being equal data-driven is better.

Of course if data-driven means short-term with bad KPIs this version of data-driven will fail. I think a lot of people picture this A/B short-term testing when they think of it.

A data-driven approach is still far from objective and relies on choosing good metrics to optimize for.

To this end I would recommend the book "How to measure anything" from Douglas W. Hubbard (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/444653.How_to_Measure...)

[mrweasel]

> I believe everything else being equal data-driven is better.

While I understand your point, it also depends on what you mean by "better". It's certainly safer, less risk, more predictable and makes planning easier. It also limits creativity and high pay offs.

Some one else commented that it was like "driving by looking only at the dashboard". You can do that very safely in planes, but you're limited in where you can go. I feel it's the same in business.

There is the option of you having an absolutely massive dataset available. It just seems a bit far fetch to assume that any company would have data that could allow them to move from developing a SaaS product to running a chain of burger joints, because the data indicates that would be a good move.

[mejutoco]

> It also limits creativity and high pay offs.

I think this fully depends on the metric that you choose. The metrics can be very creative.

> could allow them to move from developing a SaaS product to running a chain of burger joints, because the data indicates that would be a good move.

In this scenario the counterfactual is a company without data is taking the decision based on a hunch.

I think we are saying similar things. For me any decision that is rational is based on data (better or worse data, but _something_ is quantified). What and how to quantify from the real world to incentivise the right behaviour is the creative part, from my point of view.

[itsoktocry]

>It also limits creativity and high pay offs.

Why would being data-driven limit either of these things?

[mrweasel]

Because being 100% data driven means that you're removing ideas and opportunities that exist outside your datasets.

It's not realistic to have a dataset large enough to cover all situations, especially not those areas and opportunities that you don't know exist. That's also way Googles 20% projects was such a good idea. It allowed to business to grow and develop in directions they couldn't possible predict.