The amounts of data executives are exposed to on a daily basis are reaching new heights as the information age advances with technological innovations and accelerating competition among knowledge providers.  On the one hand, it is becoming easier and easier to get hold of incredibly precise indicators for the most minute details of operation, which allows decision-makers to rely on quality facts in their business choices.  On the other hand, new metrics are growing increasingly complicated, as is the case with measuring activity on the Internet, and in consequence their practical application in management is thrown into question.  Also, the overabundance of irrelevant numbers, facts and details, which regularly inundate markets, reveals a deep need for executive development curricula to put a renewed emphasis on the ability to distil a larger picture from available information and the related ability to act on it.

Among other preeminent researchers and practitioners, Professors Eric Bradlow and Peter Fader of Wharton School of Business repeatedly draw attention to multiple drawbacks inherent in ample supply of new information.  When organizations direct too many resources into data processing and create sprawling systems of handling information, the danger of losing parts of it to malicious attacks is on the rise.  To counter this trend, Bradlow and Fader have consistently lent their authority to the idea that, rather than increasing their spending on security systems, companies would be much better of if they reconsidered which data they really need and which qualify as actually redundant.  In a process named data minimization, organizations stand a chance of reducing both the costs of security and the risk of breach.  There is a role for executive development to play in empowering key decision-makers to, so to say, stop drinking from a fire hose of information and to better tap relevant knowledge.

Another area where the ability of sifting through overwhelming quantities of information is critical is measurement of Internet activity.  Here again, key people at companies tend to believe they require massive input in order to make inferences about consumer behavior or shifting trends on the market. There is a drive towards mysterious metrics that could supposedly measure, with the help of elaborate instruments, broad swathes of business reality, delivering verifiable insight that executives could act on.  It is a tempting prospect to be able to see through significant complexity of information by means of simplified models.  Bradlow and Fader, both applied statisticians, call into question most attempts at creating such comprehensive measures as empirically debatable and recommend data minimization.  It seems, despite radically greater abundance of facts, the ability of selecting the right dots and then joining them in meaningful ways retains its value, a point to consider for creators of executive development curricula that best reflect contemporary demands.