What is the difference between an Information Product and a Data Product?
A Data Product is for reuse, An Information Product is for action. In reality, people often use “Data Product” and “Information Product” interchangeably, and that is fine with me.
What is the difference between an Information Product and a Data Product?
As of May 2025, there is still no clear consensus in the data domain on the definitions of terms like “Data Product”, “Data as a Product”, “Data Product Management” and ”Data Product Thinking”.
From memory, I first started using the term “Information Product” with Gerhard DeBeer while working with him and the data team at the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) in New Zealand more than a decade ago. Neither of us can remember exactly where we first encountered the term. It may have been something we picked up along the way or something we invented without realising it. Most likely, we innovated on an existing term rather than creating it from scratch.
I often describe a Data Product as being the equivalent of a “Data Asset”, an available, packaged set of data that can be accessed and reused to create something else. A Data Product is typically raw or curated data that still needs to be refined or enhanced before it delivers value to the end user or stakeholder. It is built primarily for reuse, not necessarily for immediate consumption.
In contrast, an Information Product is intentionally designed as a final, consumable product. It is built to answer specific Business Questions, drive specific Actions, and support specific Outcomes. It is created for a particular user or system that needs to understand or act on something. An Information Product may use one or more Data Assets as inputs but shapes those inputs into a final output focused on enabling a decision, process, or action.
In reality, people often use “Data Product” and “Information Product” interchangeably, and that is fine with me. I would rather data teams concentrate on delivering products that are valuable, viable, usable, and feasible than wasting time debating the exact semantics of the two terms.
However, when we are being deliberate about how we design, deliver, deploy and enhance these products, I tend to think of it this way:
A Data Product is for reuse;
An Information Product is for action.
There is a real issue with the information product name, as product implies something you consume, and that means you have to educate people to understand that the information product reveals something about the state of the world that you have to act upon. A while back the term decision support was used. It had a similar problem. You can decide to do something and still not do it! To be effective, an information product has to make the decision to be taken and the action to take, very explicit, otherwise it is just information litter.