Very large problems, resolved by elegantly simple technology.
Twenty-five years of finding the business problem, designing the software that answers it, and building the teams that ship it — most recently across the world's largest marketing groups. I write here about where that work is going next.
My Framework
Drawn in 2016. Published in 2018. Still the map.
Every organisation wants to arrive at AI. Only a few of them can say which stage they are actually at.
I drew this to make one argument to boards, and I have been making it ever since: the value is in the order. AI applied to raw, disconnected data produces confident nonsense. Applied on top of the three steps before it, it compounds.
© 2016 Ekin Caglar First published in Mental Exercises for the C-Suite, June 2018
Data
You have it. You cannot use it. It sits in systems bought separately and never asked to speak to each other. Most organisations are further back here than their dashboards suggest.
Information
The data answers a question, in time to do something about it. This is the step that changes behaviour — and it is almost always an operational problem, not an analytics one.
Knowledge
The organisation knows things, not just the people in it. What was learned gets encoded in how the work runs, so it survives the person who learned it.
AI
Only now does AI have something to work with. The three steps before it are what turn a demonstration into an operating advantage.
Friday Thoughts
- Fri 2 May 2025 Today we augment people with AI. Soon we will augment AI with people.
- Wed 12 March 2025 Bill Gates explaining the internet to David Letterman
- Fri 14 February 2025 The media industry's jargon problem
- Fri 22 November 2024 Shouldn't we teach business skills in schools?
- Fri 15 November 2024 At what age do we let children on social media?
- Fri 8 November 2024 Alright, boss?
- Mon 28 October 2024 If everything seems under control, you are not going fast enough
- Fri 18 October 2024 Uber for builders
- Fri 11 October 2024 Why don't more barbershops offer subscriptions?
- Fri 26 July 2024 One calamity is better than a thousand pieces of advice
Where the ideas come from
Built, not theorised.
WPP
Chief Work Management Officer · 2025–2026Extended WPP Open from a platform for making work into one for making, managing and monitoring it — briefing, planning, pricing, resourcing and time in one place, with project profitability and resource utilisation calculated as the time is entered.
T&P
Global CTO · 2024–2025Technology across a 1,900-person network. Trained the whole organisation to use AI in its day-to-day work, designed an outcome-based operating model, and helped get a campaign into the public's hands that let people request a personalised video from an AI José Mourinho.
Publicis Groupe
Head of AgencyTech · 2019–2024Built the platform behind the Power of One model, so a project could draw on people from any agency in any country without anyone needing to think about where in the Groupe they came from.
BBH
Head of AgencyTech · 2016–2019Asked where technology fitted into the future of an agency, and answered it with real-time profitability and utilisation — so decisions got made during the work rather than after it.
Sibilo · Woto
Founder · 2002–2016Founded an enterprise software business whose compliance product reached a large share of the UK public sector, then co-founded Woto, a publishing platform that reached readers in 117 countries.
Earlier, digital strategy consulting for the Bank of England and Boots.
Across the programmes I have led. I wrote my first line of code in 1986.
The full record →Beyond the work
One instinct, different materials.
Music
I compose and produce. Software and music come from the same place — I have never been able to not make things, and these are two of the ways it gets out.
Basketball
Played and followed for most of my life. The best argument I know for why a team of good people beats a team of good players.
Skiing
With my family, whenever the calendar allows it.