It takes time to build the financial discipline necessary to save when you can, and the same goes for building the analytical skills needed to estimate the value of a security or to distinguish a mispriced asset from one with limited growth prospects.

FORBES: Why Should You Save?

The rise in the volume, variety, and velocity of data, the arrival of many new types of analytical tools all across the business intelligence value chain, and the emergence of new forms of computer science dedicated to data processing such as Hadoop, has created a vacuum.

FORBES: Tableau Software's Pat Hanrahan on "What Is a Data Scientist?"

The value of big data to an organization falls into two categories: analytical use, and enabling new products.

FORBES: Volume, Velocity, Variety: What You Need to Know About Big Data

The person or small group with ultimate operational responsibility for shareholder value creation, typically the CEO or President, must legitimately desire reliable analytical knowledge of the business.

FORBES: Three Ways To Make Big Data Make Money

He dismisses the importance of dividends because of their double taxation, and says book value is only a good measure within industries and doesn't provide analytical insight into the broad market.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Accounting and finance can help because they give us analytical tools to make projections and to link what we expect to happen in the real world with the value added by our efforts.

FORBES: The Only Three Reasons Entrepreneurs Need Accounting and Finance

To get the most business value from the exploding quantities of data requires skills from all of these groups, combining business knowledge, analytical skills, and computer science.

FORBES: Tableau Software's Pat Hanrahan on "What Is a Data Scientist?"