Knowledge Products offer New Business Models

A new business model is emerging which is the delivery of super-useful machine-readable knowledge products what will drive modern software applications.  Many knowledge products will be delivered in the form of high-quality knowledge graphs.  It is my view that accountants, auditors, and analysts will create such knowledge products to package and sell their hard earned knowledge.

To understand what a knowledge product is; I want to explain the differences between data products, information products, and knowledge products.  In summary, data products focus on providing raw but trusted, accessible data for analysis. Information products provide information, often in a structured format like a report or guide. Knowledge products take this a step further by processing and organizing information to make it super-useful. In my view, NFTs will play a role in the delivery of knowledge products. (See the Data Product Pyramid)

Data is raw and unprocessed and tends to be understandable only in one context.  Information is data in context and has been processed and organized. Knowledge is refined and actionable information that has been processed, organized, and/or structured in some way making the information super-useful.  Insight and wisdom come from applying knowledge to some specific situation.

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Data Product: (What is a Data Product; What is a data product and what are the key characteristics) 

A data product is generally a reusable raw and unprocessed data asset, engineered to deliver a trusted dataset to a user for a specific purpose. It integrates data from relevant source systems, processes the data, ensures that it is compliant, and makes the data accessible to those with the right credentials.  The focus of a data product is raw, unprocessed data which can be numbers, text, or some sort of measurement.  Examples of a data product are stock market data, website traffic lots, social media posts.  The data might be delivered in the form of a CSV file, spreadsheets, an API, an XML file, RDF, JSON.

A data product generally provides the foundation for further analysis and insights. For example, you might use a data product in some analysis model that you have created.

Information Product: (Types of Information Products; Selling Information Products)  

An information product tends to provide processed information to the information product’s user.  Information products are often used to monetize knowledge.  Information products are organized and interpreted data which provides context and meaning. Information is generally provided in a way that the information can be consumed such as reports, dashboards of information, articles, and in the future very likely machine-readable knowledge graphs of high-quality information.

Information products help their users do things like understand trends, patterns, relationships within the information. An example of an information product might be the analysis of stock market data for a specific company or companies within a specific industry. A financial report of a company can be considered an information product.

Knowledge Product: (What are Knowledge Products?; What is a knowledge product?)

A knowledge product is refined and actionable information that has been processed, organized, and/or structured in some way or put into practice in some way making the information super-useful.  The information is ready to use.  The knowledge is derived from expertise, research, lessons learned.  Knowledge products allow the user of the knowledge product to make informed decisions or better decisions.

Knowledge products provide insights, best practices, good practices, expertise which was derived from information, skills and experience. Knowledge products tend to answer "why" and "how" types of questions.  Knowledge products can be delivered in a wide variety of forms such as training material, templates, guides, checklists, tutorials, artificial intelligence models, spreadsheet models.  In the future knowledge products will, I believe, include machine-readable knowledge graphs that, preferably, use a global standard format and are proven to be of high quality per a logical schema.

Knowledge products empower their users, and the user could be a human or a software application such as an expert system for creating financial reports or your tax return.  AI-powered software agents or assistants need machine-readable knowledge to operate.  Subject matter experts in some area of knowledge will create these knowledge products.

An example of a knowledge product is an accounting oracle machine which I have mentioned before here and here.

Knowledge products are actionable; they should equip the users of the knowledge product to make informed decisions or take effective action in the moment. This could be in the form of recommendations of some sort, knowledge about best practices, or maybe a checklist or step-by-step guide.  Knowledge products are driven by the skills and expertise and deep understanding gained within some specific field.  Knowledge products do not provide a surface level understanding, they offer true insights and understanding.

Knowledge products tend to be tailored to the audience or a specific group of users and address the needs and challenges of that audience or group.  Knowledge products might teach new knowledge.  They might provide expert consultations to tap into the expertise of specific individuals or organizations.  They could provide personalized recommendations or solutions to very specific problems.

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In the past, customers of knowledge products where humans.  Tomorrow, computer software applications will also be consumers of knowledge products. (Anansi, spider god of knowledge)


I ran across this notion of a data product pyramid in another article.  Apparently I need to add another "bucket" to my categories, decision products.  Also, it is seeming to me that one could call these "products" or they could also be "services".

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