Your operational data is now an asset class

What is the short answer?

Operational data just became an asset class. A billion-dollar commitment to licensing enterprise workflows proves it: the judgment trapped in your operations — exceptions handled, priorities balanced, friction navigated — is worth more than generic web text. Your exhaust is someone's training gold.

What should companies do about it?

Inventory what you know that the internet doesn't. Incident playbooks, support resolutions, ops decisions, edge cases — documented judgment no crawler ever saw. That inventory is licensable, defensible, and appreciating.

What are the rules before licensing anything?

De-identify, get consent, keep control. Strip customers and secrets, contract the scope, retain audit rights. Data deals signed casually become regrets permanently. Legal review is cheaper than the alternative by orders of magnitude.

What is the small-team version?

Publish the patterns, keep the raw logs. Share learnings publicly to build authority; license or productize the underlying data carefully. Attention compounds from generosity; revenue compounds from scarcity. Do both, deliberately.