Data Drivers, NOT Sitters!

“Datentreiber sounds like a slave driver.” “People don’t want to be driven like cattle.” “Datentreiber makes people think of sex drive.” I’ve heard many such statements about our company name. Actually, only from Germans.

From abroad, the response was: “Datentreiber, yes: Driver!” “Data driver, I like that.”

I see similar patterns with the term “data-driven.” A customer asked us to rename an in-house training course: instead of “Data-Driven Marketing”, it should be called “Data-Powered Marketing”. And then I read on LinkedIn about “data-based,” “data-informed,” “data-inspired,” “data-whatever.”

When I mention this abroad, I get puzzled looks. No one really understands why “driven” or “driver” are negative terms. On the contrary: a “key driver” is a success factor. “Value driver trees” explain how business value is created. And if something is “X-driven,” it means that “X” generates value for the company.

AI is data-driven. Data drives AI.

The value of AI is created by the data used to train the AI model. Business is data-driven when business value is created from business data.

Those who make data-driven decisions are not driven by the data in their decisions, but recognize the value of the data for decision-making. They are driven by the desire to collect the right data in order to make the right decisions.

If they don’t have this data, they make decisions to obtain it, in particular by opting for experiments.

This is precisely the difference to data-based, data-informed, and data-inspired. It’s not about just looking in the basement and searching for data that happens to be suitable for decision-making and being informed or inspired by it.

Instead, it’s about asking yourself what data you need to make better decisions and thus to make better business. Data-driven companies are experiment-driven. But “experiment-driven” would probably have evoked even more negative feelings.

We deliberately chose “Datentreiber” because we want to drive our customers forward with data (and analytics and AI).

We also made a conscious decision to keep the name, despite or because of internationalization. We are a German company and our customers are located all over the world. That’s why we communicate primarily in English.

Wouldn’t it be much more absurd the other way around? An English company name, but communication only in German?

My son recently told me that he likes “Datentreiber”. It sounds like someone who wants to do something, not someone who just sits around. “You are not data sitters”, he told me.

He said it all.