Alan Morrison

After 20-plus years of industry analysis, Alan Morrison has developed a keen sense for how knowledge graphs can help enterprises.

Even though he has focused on advanced tech and emerging IT practices and is deeply immersed and invested in current tech developments, much of his advice for enterprises looking to develop their data maturity involves pragmatic baby steps and basic mindset shifts.

We talked about:

his work in the consulting world and his organizing work around the knowledge graph community to improve awareness of the technology

the need to find "foxes instead of the hedgehogs" in enterprises when you're trying to promote adoption of new tech

the relationships between different AI tech, like LLMs and knowledge graphs, and the common connection they share: data

the importance of having mature data practices in any enterprise

how even simple metadata practices in common tools like spreadsheets can support better enterprise data practices

how sidestepping the formal org chart and forming guerrilla teams can advance data practice

the benefits of starting small in any knowledge graph project

how representing organization knowledge at a high level in a knowledge graph can help solve big enterprise problems

how a knowledge graph gives you a multidimensional Tinker Toys set to model and understand your org's data

the benefits of moving from tabular thinking to graph thinking

his frustration with the current framing of AI as being solely about machine learning

his observation that practices across any org - content, knowledge management, data management, business people - could benefit from long-standing standards and proven technologies (that might not be as sexy and topical as LLMs)

Alan's bio

Alan Morrison is a longtime analyst, writer, advisor and podcaster on advanced data technologies and emerging IT. For 20 years at PwC's R&D and innovation think tanks, Alan identified emerging technologies on the cusp of adoption, assessed their business impacts, and advised PwC's clients on innovation strategy.

Before PwC, he was a semiconductor industry market analyst and forecaster, a retail site location analyst, and a US Navy intelligence analyst, Russian linguist and aircrewman.

For the last five years, Alan has been a contributor on knowledge graph and related topics for Data Science Central. His writings over the years have covered dozens of different technologies.

Connect with Alan online

LinkedIn

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/TXOWWjM-DBc

Podcast intro transcript

This is the Knowledge Graph Insights podcast, episode number 5. You might think that the lofty perch of multiple decades in industry-analyst roles would inspire grand visions of tech transformation with leading-edge technology. Quite the opposite in the case Alan Morrison. He shows how enterprises can advance their data maturity by cultivating basic graph thinking in their organizations and by taking small, pragmatic steps like adopting established standards for interoperability or simply adding metadata to a spreadsheet.

Interview transcript

Larry:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number five of the Knowledge Graph Insights podcast. I am really happy today to welcome to the show Alan Morrison. Currently, he's a contributor at Data Science Central, a well-known publication in the field. He's a freelancer and consultant around knowledge graphs and a lot of other areas as well. His background, he comes out of the consulting world. Most recently before his current role as a freelancer and consultant, he worked for many years at PriceWaterhouseCooper, the big consultancy as a senior research fellow. So welcome, Alan. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days.

Alan:

Hey, Larry. Great to talk with you and folks should know that you and I have some history together as a part of the Data Worthy Collective,