This chapter explores the complexities organizations face in categorizing data while balancing precision with practicality, particularly in regulated environments. It emphasizes the importance of proactive privacy measures, like differential privacy, and urges businesses to focus on actionable insights rather than historical data dependencies. The conversation highlights the need for ethical data handling and encourages a mindset shift towards viewing privacy as an opportunity for innovation.
While we don’t often call it out explicitly, the driving force behind much of what and how much data we collect is driven by a "just in case" mentality: we don't know exactly HOW that next piece of data will be put to use, but we better collect it to minimize the potential for future regret about NOT collecting it. Data collection is an optionality play—we strive to capture "all the data" so that we have as many potential options as possible for how it gets crunched somewhere down the road. On this episode, we explored the many ways this deeply ingrained and longstanding mindset is problematic, and we were joined by the inimitable Matt Gershoff from Conductrics for the discussion! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.