Data Eats Brand For Breakfast

European Straits #34

Dear all,

Last Monday, I participated in a conference at Sciences Po Paris where experts were grilled by graduate students eager to learn more about the “Data Revolution”. The event was sponsored by the Technology, Policy, and Institutional Innovation chair that I’m co-heading within the Sciences Po School of Public Affairs. To prepare and clear up my ideas, I worked on a few key points.

Studying the history of business helps us see that large corporations have not always expressed an interest in consumers. The steel industry, which formed the vanguard of the third technological revolution from 1875 onwards, didn’t sell steel to consumers, but to other, smaller businesses that used that cheap and robust commodity to manufacture goods or build infrastructures for the general public. The Standard Oil Company, with John D. Rockefeller’s obsession with vertical integration down to the end consumer, was a notable exception in the late 19th century.

It all changed with the fourth technological…