Over the past decade, the world has increasingly understood the impact of intelligently leveraged data. Tackling the biggest challenges — improving healthcare and education, stewarding the climate and natural resources, fighting poverty, protecting privacy and managing the huge global population — will depend on effectively understanding and acting on data.

While the message of constant change has been a familiar refrain since the dawn of the commercial internet, we are on the cusp of a significant increase in the rate of data creation and utilization. We are at the advent of new disruptions, new threats and new opportunities. Just as the union of 4G telecommunications and the smartphone unleashed dramatic changes in business and daily life, five intensifying forces are combining to bring a new level of transformation, and a powerful wave of opportunity for both global society and the well-prepared organization. A data wave.