:: The 4th Era ::

Robin Good: In January of 2009 the McKinsey Quarterly published a video interview and a full article entitled "Hal Varian on how the Web challenges managers" in which Google’s chief economist told executives in wired organizations how much they needed a sharper understanding of how technology empowers innovation.

In the video, Hal Varian says something that if you are trying to understand the emerging curation trend, is as relevant (if not more) today as three years ago when it was first published:

"The ability to take data - to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it's going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades, not only at the professional level but even at the educational level for elementary school kids, for high school kids, for college kids.

Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data.

So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it.

I think statisticians are part of it, but it's just a part.

You also want to be able to visualize the data, communicate the data, and utilize it effectively.

But I do think those skills - of being able to access, understand, and communicate the insights you get from data analysis - are going to be extremely important..."

Video interview: http://bit.ly/googlehalvarianoncuration 

(go to the section "Workers and managers")

You will need to register to read the full original article: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Hal_Varian_on_how_the_Web_challenges_managers_2286