“When data is driven by a business strategy that informs a data strategy, things are incredibly effective and you're able to really extract a lot of value and learnings out of data. Companies that go out and hire a lot of data scientists but don't really know what they should be focused on — that can work but it so often doesn't.”

Business Strategy Must Drive Data Strategy — Not the Other Way Around

The most common data failure pattern: hire smart people, collect everything, and assume insight will emerge. Taylor Wells argues data only creates value when it's answering specific questions the business is already trying to answer. Start with the decisions you need to make, work backwards to the metrics that would inform those decisions, and only then build the data infrastructure to capture them.