Business and technology have shared more than 50 years of evolution, sometimes as partners, sometimes as an odd couple. Were the gains and profits balanced fairly? And how well did we manage to provide effective business information management? This book explores these questions through nine retrospective essays with real-world experiences. Covering key eras such as reporting, databases, information quality, semantics and artificial intelligence, it highlights lessons learned and contrasts between U.S. and European approaches.

Looking ahead, the book offers ten forward-thinking essays with practical recommendations for aligning business strategy and technology. It advocates replacing over-engineered, logic-heavy methods with human-friendly approaches, cognition, infographics, context-sensitive knowledge graphs, and robust metadata governance supported by AI. The book concludes with inspiring projects. It also offers 16 surprising takeaways, making it an essential guide for decision-makers seeking intuitive, future-ready solutions.

The book is written for business managers and analysts, technology professionals, product and solution architects, as well as policymakers who want to understand past challenges and shape future strategies. Anyone concerned with – or studying - rapid technological change and its impact on business and society will find valuable insights here.

Thomas Frisendal is an experienced data consultant with more than 30 years on the IT vendor side and as an independent consultant. Since 1995 he has primarily been working with data warehouse and business intelligence projects. His area of excellence lies within the art of turning data into information and knowledge. Since 2005 he has specialised in business analysis, concept "harvesting" and mapping, modelling of information, graphs and data as well as design of knowledge graph solutions. Thomas Frisendal has been a member of "The Data Warehouse Institute Denmark" (member of the chapter board), "The Danish IT Society", "The Danish Management Board", "The International Association for Information and Data Quality" (IAIDQ) and "The Cognitive Society". He has been a speaker at many international conferences and educational courses. In 2019 he joined the international graph standardisation work on the SQL/GQL committee (ISO/IEC 39075:2024 Information technology, Database languages, GQL) as the national representative of Denmark.