Business & culture
Data does not drink coffee at the meeting.
But it can reveal what is missing from the table: hypotheses, evidence and questions that change the way a company works.
Our opening story
The case of the tapioca nobody sold.
In an interview with Flow Podcast, Diego Barreto describes uses of artificial intelligence at iFood, Brazil’s largest food-delivery app. Among the examples: spotting demand for a product that restaurants in a given neighborhood did not yet offer.
It is a good story because it starts with a simple problem: how do you know what customers want if nobody is selling it? The answer involves clues scattered across the operation, and an investigative process able to connect them.
Read: The tapioca that nobody sold
What does a data-driven culture change?
01 · Consumption
The product the customer looked for — but did not find.
Search, availability and demand data can raise hypotheses about business opportunities.
02 · Operations
The order is ready. Where is the courier?
Forecasting availability, organizing resources and understanding real time transforms operations.
03 · People
Was the decision made before the analysis?
A company learns when it accepts testing ideas and revisiting certainties, including those of its leaders.
04 · Real world
Retail, industry, football and the environment.
The questions differ, but the reasoning of investigating evidence can be the same.
Our editorial commitment. We analyze cases with identified authorship and sources; the Diego Barreto video is a third-party interview, not a production of this magazine. The examples are put in context, not treated as independent validation of iFood’s internal results.
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Signals from reality
The tapioca nobody sold
The customer wanted. The bakery could make. The problem was nobody had introduced the two.