Knowledge Scientists: Unlocking the data-driven organization

Abstract: Organizations across all sectors are increasingly undergoing deep transformation and restructuring towards data-driven operations. The central role of data highlights the need for reliable and clean data. Unreliable, erroneous, and incomplete data lead to critical bottlenecks in processing pipelines and, ultimately, service failures, which are disastrous for the competitive performance of the organization. Given its central importance, those organizations which recognize and react to the need for reliable data will have the advantage in the coming decade. We argue that the technologies for reliable data are driven by distinct concerns and expertise which complement those of the data scientist and the data engineer. Those organizations which identify the central importance of meaningful, explainable, reproducible, and maintainable data will be at the forefront of the democratization of reliable data. We call the new role which must be developed to fill this critical need the Knowledge Scientist. The organizational structures, tools, methodologies and techniques to support and make possible the work of knowledge scientists are still in their infancy. As organizations not only use data but increasingly rely on data, it is time to empower the people who are central to this transformation.