Data is not the phenomena. The primary function of data is to represent the phenomena—to create a simulation of reality. But there is a misconception about data that is so prevalent it’s tacitly embedded in many organizations—the idea that only quantitative data is objective. There’s a pervasive belief that there is some set of ideal data that can, together, yield the perfect insights about customers. It’s just a matter of figuring what the right data is. In short, we can know “truth” if we just gather the right data in quantitative form, the kind of information that can be fed into a
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