Scanning an update from the IQ Consortium, which looks after data standards in the pharmaceuticals industry, I was struck by one of the benefits of standards mentioned alongside the well-known ones. Costly, unreliable and hard-to-share information make up the usual suspects. Here's the novel addition: “Obstacles for data exchange also contribute to 'missed opportunity' costs because they make it difficult to collaborate and innovate.”
This is so true – and so hard to measure, or insert in a business case. Yet there is no doubt that for organizations of all shapes and sizes, in all walks of life, the inability to share data is the greatest missed opportunity of them all.
Once you can speak some of the language of your community, your world enlarges. Once you have currency that others trust, you can trade. Once you have standards for data exchange, you can learn more, do more business, discover synergies... It's like entering a whole new dimension.
We need business leaders to state clearly that collaboration and innovation are not just buzzwords, or nice-to-have's, or things that we'll get around to doing after we fix everything else. Collaboration and innovation are the future. Without them, there is nothing ahead. The scale of a “missed opportunity” could be the very opportunity to continue in existence. Get into standards, and grow your opportunities. IPQ
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