Data is the core of all experiences an organization delivers – whether to the customers, employees or it’s broader ecosystem. As the ability to store, access and process data continues to get simpler, products and their underlying decisions are increasingly data-driven.
Historically data products were referred to products that helped better understand and utilize data – mostly analytics and BI products. In the past few years, most products are flywheels that run on a continuous stream of data and are powered by sciences.
What does it mean for Product Management?
Products help users achieve a goal. Data products use data (and sciences) to do that faster and better.
The best products today represent user interactions (and the value they deliver) as a data stream and deploy sciences on this data to continuously enhance the value of the interactions.
Consider for example Google Maps, whose mission is to help users navigate as well as discover the best places to go and things to do once you’re there. This mission is realized by continuously improving the reasons, and the methods, that drive user interaction – from setting up a trip with lowest traffic, to asking for nearby gas stations on the way to a long drive and exploring places when we arrive at a destination. All this is hyper personalized using data and machine learning, enabling a flywheel of great experiences.
Horizontal data products
Products that enable better utilization of data – either through efficient storage, sciences or AI. Horizontal AI products that bring out core AI capabilities are often grouped here.
For example, see GCP ML & AI Products.
Flywheel products
Consumer facing products that are fuelled by data and semi-autonomous, often science driven, decisioning systems. Consumer facing products that operate at scale are primarily data-enabled experiences.
For example, see How Google Maps uses AI
With data-product.com, I intend to bring together ideas, resources and people for helping us build better data products – for horizontal as well as flywheel products.
To new beginnings and the power of data!
Data & Products 
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