Ed Lewis Of Industrial Info Resources On How To Leverage Data To Grow Your Business

Researched by IIR News (Sugar Land, Texas)--Editor's Note: This article was published by Authority Magazine on December 25, 2025.

As a part of our series about "How To Leverage Data To Grow Your Business," we had the pleasure of interviewing Ed Lewis, Industrial Info Resources.

Ed Lewis is the founder and CEO of Industrial Info Resources, which for the last 42 years has been providing data and market intelligence across the entire supply chain of companies involved in industrial and energy-related markets. As a native Houstonian, Lewis has long been recognized as a pioneer in the industrial market intelligence space, and some would even say, a disruptor. He has guided his business from a small North American-focused start-up to one that has offices in every major region of the world, employing hundreds of researchers.

Thank you so much for joining us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to "get to know you" a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your 'backstory' and how you got started?

What led me to start the company was really just sheer necessity. Back in the 1980s, like many in the energy and industrial markets, recession hit hard, and I was another casualty of that and found myself without a job. I was married with a young family, and it was very much a case of sink or swim. I chose to swim. I had been involved in the construction industry, which, at that time, had an unemployment rate of over 24% at its height, jobs were thin on the ground, and hard to find. My particular background back then was selling construction and project management solutions; this provided me with a solid grounding of both data and technology. And so, as I started to chew over how best I could utilize the knowledge and skill sets I had accumulated over the years and where I could make an impact on the world, I decided to go back and speak to some of my old clients. I asked them what some of their pain points were in pursuing new business. The universal response was that there was a lack of verified information with high data accuracy available in the market that they could trust and rely on to help them identify opportunities and win new business. And so, it was these basic needs that were not being met by anyone else in the market that led me to set up a market intelligence business. Our focus was on delivering verified, accurate and timely data, based on primary research direct from the source--and it's these same exact principles that still sit very much at the heart of our business today.

It has been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a humorous mistake you made when you were first starting and the lesson you learned from that?

Being a business owner is like spinning plates while riding a unicycle--on a tightrope. You're not just in charge of creating products and delivering services to your customers; you're also the leader, coach, and occasionally the shoulder to cry on for your team. And then of course there's the duty of paying the bills--making sure your employees, partners, suppliers, and vendors get their dues on time. It's a lot. When you're just getting started, you have to take some risks in order to get small gains. It's often a series of small gains that helps build the momentum to carry you forward.

Those early days taught me some hard truths. I knew I had to innovate constantly to stay ahead. And innovation? It costs money. The more you create, the more you spend--and it takes time before that investment pays off. For a while, we were definitely spending more than we were making.

1. Don't spend what you don't have. Simple, but not always easy when you're starting up your business.
2. Make small incremental improvements that have big impacts instead of radical changes that are risky and expensive.
3. Build long-term tenure with your good employees by establishing a career path with good pay incentives and recognition when they do a good job.

Envision what you want to be and set your goals high. But the key was turning the vision into reality. We are constantly striving to innovate and improve our products and services, as well as our internal business processes. We started from humble beginnings and have never forgotten where we came from. But we definitely don't take our success for granted, and complacency is not in our DNA.

These days, innovation still drives us. But we don't treat it like a rigid checklist full of jargon. It's more like a creative mindset fueled by passion (and a strong cup of coffee). When something doesn't go as planned, we don't accept it as a failure--we accept it as a challenge. We keep on trying until we succeed.

We've built a culture where mistakes are just opportunities to learn little lessons. Every misstep just sets us up for a stronger next move. Around here, we like to say, "Innovation is the father of necessity." Because let's be real--some of our best ideas didn't come from brainstorming, but from striving to improve what we already had in place. And that's the beauty of building something from scratch--every challenge, twist, and weird moment becomes part of the story.

Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader?

One of the biggest decisions I ever made was to expand globally. We were already well known and well regarded as a top regional brand, with a loyal customer base, but I knew there was more we could do. Do I settle for being just a regional player, or do I pursue a bigger goal? And that was the big question that kept me awake at night. In some ways, the decision was taken out of my hands. A lot of my customers, many of whom are still with us some 40 plus years later, kept telling me that they were looking for a truly global service provider, but that there were none out there that could deliver to the same standard that they have grown accustomed to in using our current service.

The uncertainty in my mind was that I was taking this big decision to expand right at a time when the world was cautiously emerging from the "Great Recession" of 2008-2009. It might not have looked like the perfect time to take such a bold step, but we knew it was the right one. Our customers needed us to grow, and we knew we would get the support from them once we did. Coming out of such a turbulent economic period, our customers were facing market conditions that were tougher, leaner, and more competitive than ever before--they needed to seek new markets to win new business, and I knew we were the ones that could help them achieve this.

And around that same time, the concept of "big data" was just beginning to take shape. The explosion of online information, coupled with rapid digitalization, was both an opportunity and a challenge for our customers. It gave them access to more data and information than ever before--but if that data and information has not been verified, it can add far more uncertainty.

This break-out in the availability of global information rapidly changed the landscape and meant any company, no matter its size, could now compete and operate globally in ways that were once impossible. We wanted to be at the forefront of this and help empower more of our customers to be able to expand their businesses to capitalize on this new outlook. I was confident in our strengths--particularly our research methodologies and knowledge management systems, which were, and still are, among the best in the industry. But scaling these globally was no small task. It requires being brave, being surrounded by the right people, having belief in your own capabilities, and constantly challenging yourself to do better tomorrow.

Our success in achieving our global expansion was based on not losing sight of why we started out in the first place--it's about staying true to our core principle of striving to be best-in-class in the products and services that we provide.

Are you working on any new, exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

Over the last decade, we have incorporated analytics into our offerings since it is a key enabler in helping our end-users to better analyze, interpret, and generate insights from the vast datasets we provide and constantly update. But our customers' needs are ever-changing, and these changes are occurring in step with the rapid evolution of market intelligence technologies that are now available.

Like many forward-thinking organizations, we're heavily involved in exploring how best to use artificial intelligence (AI). But what sets us apart is how we're utilizing it and what we are feeding it. We are not using AI to reduce our work staff--we are using AI to empower them. We're not relying on generic data or off-the-shelf models. Instead, we're training our AI and specialized large language models (LLM) on our own proprietary data.

And this isn't just any data--it's Trusted Data. For example, new capital and maintenance projects are announced continuously; their timelines and project scopes are constantly changing and being revised. Some projects get the green light, others get shelved. Fresh production capacity comes online even as some facilities go idle. Layer all that in with the rising geopolitical tensions, trade uncertainties, and constantly evolving policies, and you've got a business environment that moves faster than ever before.

And so, what do you need as part of your corporate toolkit to help you build your strategy and plans, guide your marketing activities, and steer your sales and business development resources in the right direction? Well, AI can help, and so can having great analytics and dashboards. But it all means nothing if none of this is grounded in "Trusted Data." And that's where we step in.

We're committed to helping our customers stay ahead--to better spot trends as they develop and cut through the noise to uncover what really matters. And we can do it because we combine three powerful elements:

Our proprietary Global Market Intelligence database spans over 40 years of development. Decades of deep industry and market knowledge and intellectual capital. The latest proven technologies, including AI, and analytic and geospatial tools.

And it is the synergy between these ingredients that enables our end-users to be able to generate the insights they need from the data we provide, in a much faster and more impactful way.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. For me, a great leader is one who doesn't just manage the today, but can see where it needs to go tomorrow. And that leader needs to be realistic and be able to adopt and adapt quickly to shifts in the market as they occur--I am a sailor, and I know that no successful journey is achieved by simply setting a single course, sitting back, and taking in the view. It requires constant business improvements and constantly "trimming one's sails." And being able to know how best to trim your sails in order to chart the best course requires numerous inputs. Some are hard data points, and some require intuition and experience in reading the weather conditions. And so, every year we aim to bring new enhancements to the market; some are big breakouts and some are small incremental improvements--not everything you do needs to be groundbreaking. Sometimes, even these small improvements, when layered together, can still make a huge impact.
2. Secondly, leadership is about helping to maintain momentum. And for us, that momentum is the pursuit of excellence. Whether that excellence is in the products we provide or the customer service we offer. We always strive to achieve best-in-class--we challenge ourselves daily. In many cases, your only limitations are the ones you self-impose. Our favorite saying is "success has no boundaries, but failure has many". Very often, people who work in organizations feel limited by their role, or their designation, or title, and so we recently initiated a much more collective and collaborative approach to how we lead and manage our business, and this has yielded numerous successes. My goal is to empower all my staff to have a voice and play a role in the innovations we make, both in the new products we develop and in coming up with better ways to serve our customers. Why? There is no point in hiring the best people you can, but then holding them back from coming forward with their ideas. Working together in such a way helps ignite many small sparks of ideas. Some work; some don't. But by working collectively and collaboratively across our global teams, "As One" and in sync with each other, we can quickly hone in on those ideas that can become our next big thing. And this is a continuous process we now live by.
3. And finally, it's not just about being in charge. Leadership is about inspiring others to follow, and you can only do that by standing shoulder to shoulder with your teams. And, to be willing to lead by example. When a storm hits, yes, the skipper needs to helm a safe course, but he also needs to be able and willing to stand in and help change a torn sail on the bow. My view in life is, don't ask others to do what you wouldn't be willing to do yourself.

Thank you for all that. Let's now turn to the main focus of our discussion about empowering organizations to be more "data-driven." For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what it looks like to use data to make decisions?

In a world where market conditions can shift overnight and uncertainty is the only constant, data is no longer just a commodity--it's a strategic imperative. Today, where digitalization and the flow of information are at their peak, being able to turn that information into insights, those insights into actions, and these actions into competitive advantage, is what everyone is seeking to achieve.

Over the last 40-plus years, we've seen the information service sector constantly evolve, and it's ongoing; from the information age, defined by the gathering and dissemination of data, to the knowledge age, where the value now lies in interpreting and understanding that data. Today, we're pushing beyond both. The next frontier--the answer age--demands clarity, foresight, and the ability to act with confidence, even amid the constant change and complexity that we now have to contend with.

For the last few years, we have worked hard to combine the skill sets of our highly-trained human network with many years of experience in industry, coupled with leading-edge technologies.

But we recognize that the barriers are being lowered through the surge in AI applications and tools and large language models that are now available. And it makes sense that every company should be looking at ways to utilize AI in their business processes. But even the most advanced AI is only as strong as the data that feeds it. The key lies in being able to feed your AI models with only the most accurate data, or what we call "Trusted Data." AI on its own can't fast-track you to high-quality insights. Your output is only as strong as the data fueling it. Trusted data is to AI as gasoline is to an engine--without it, performance falls flat.

Why is this so important? Well, the reality is that the markets we all operate in today are way more complex and interconnected than ever before. That means when a geopolitical event or supply-chain disruption occurs, there's a shift in trade tariffs, or a new policy is announced in one region, it now has a much more amplified ripple effect across the globe. Being able to navigate these currents of change now requires companies to not just ask about the "what" and "where," but they need to also understand and be able to respond to the "why" and "how" in order to be able to adapt quickly, outmaneuver competitors, and turn what can at first appear to be uncertainty and risk into opportunities. So, welcome to the answer-age; it's not just about knowing more--it's about knowing what to do next.

Based on your experience, which companies can most benefit from tools that empower data collaboration?

All organizations look for ways to utilize data as part of their decision-making processes. Whether that is building your strategic plan and roadmap, deciding which new markets to enter, or designing new products to bring to market. Many will try and fast-track their way there through the use of ChatGPT and various other AI applications. But that will get you only part of the way there. To generate actions that you can trust and rely on goes back to the need for Trusted Data. But not everyone has the resources, skill sets, or capabilities to create a truly data-to-knowledge-rich organization; certainly not to the level they would like to attain. And yes, it is true that the huge surge in deploying AI solutions is enabling more people to access larger volumes of data. But, without that quality assurance, can those decisions you make be 100% relied upon?

Can you share some examples of how data analytics and data collaboration can help to improve operations, processes, and customer experiences? We'd love to hear some stories if possible.

One area we have been very successful in is around geospatial mapping. This is a really interesting space right now. This involves bringing together our dynamically updated underlying data and state-of-the-art geospatial software. It's an area of analytics that sometimes gets overlooked, but it is incredibly useful because it turns raw location-based data into visual, actionable insights that help organizations understand where things are happening, why they're happening there, and how different locations interact.

I recall one memorable moment back in 2017 when I was stranded at my home on the West Coast when Hurricane Harvey hit. Our head office in Houston was totally offline, but our staff were busy trying to do everything they could to keep our research flowing, as well as keeping our data platform up and running for customers.

This was a storm that not only hit tens of thousands of homeowners along the Gulf Coast, but also multiple power plants, refineries, onshore and offshore oil and gas assets, and other infrastructure. My researchers' phones were ringing red-hot from customers asking about the extent and location of the damage, when we thought these plants would be back online, and where we thought the next wave of damage would be. In turn, my researchers were calling all these assets to get updates on the status of their operations and whether service or production had been impaired.

What we had at that time was a great plant and asset database combined with our human network; what we needed was a way to map those facilities while also tracking the path of a storm. It was then that I had a light-bulb moment, one that led to a new stream of product innovation. Through the combination of our technology team, third-party weather service provider, and our researchers, we designed and built a product called the IIR Disaster Impact Tracker. This is a geospatial tool that is now used as the go-to resource for all our customers we service; whether that be traders tracking supply-side interruptions, or industrial clients looking for service opportunities for plants that have critical needs. Or even insurers seeking inputs to their risk models.

My favorite saying is this: "For every storm, there's a wave." We use this to describe how we focus on the waves of opportunities that will happen as a result of the storm. In closing, we help our customers find those waves of opportunities that will help them weather any storm that might come their way.

Based on your experience, how do you think the needs for data might evolve and change over the next five years?

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift; the transition we are making from the information age to a new knowledge era. This comes at a time when the markets we all operate in are much more complex than ever before, and part of that complexity is due to the fact that, even in a world that is pushing for more resource nationalism, they are still heavily interconnected. An event that happens in one far-flung location of the world, be it a new tariff or a country changes its domestic policies or a conflict occurs somewhere, has an impact on commodity prices; all of these now have big ripple effects elsewhere, simultaneously.

And what we are seeing is that more companies are seeking ways to keep track of these events and better understand not only the What, the Where and the When, but also the Why and the What to do next. What we're now seeing is more companies out there that are looking to AI as a way to fast-track their way to generate the insights and answers they need to keep them ahead of the game. But there is a flaw in this--the biggest issue facing any company looking to use AI to support their decision making remains data integrity, quality, accuracy, and timeliness. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how sophisticated your AI solutions and tools are, you need to have Trusted Data. And so in an era that will increasingly be influenced and shaped by AI, access to Trusted Data becomes the key ingredient. AI is only as powerful as the data that powers it.

But there are huge barriers to being able to create Trusted Data, and the best way to do that has always been and always will be the ability to create data not with AI but via a human-in-the-loop network. This means having individuals who have deep industry and market knowledge, on the ground, who are gathering and verifying that raw information directly from the source, and then having a robust knowledge management methodology and the right technology infrastructure to manage that data and convert it into actionable knowledge and insights.

As a person of significant influence, if you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

In a world that often feels increasingly divided, a multinational company such as ours is more than just a business--it's a living ecosystem of human potential. For me, I truly see the strength of "different," because this is what sparks and ignites ideas and innovations. And it is this that which has helped make us so successful to date. We have managed to create such an environment because at the forefront of everything we do as a business is the basic principle of mutual respect for each other.

How can our readers further follow your work?

• https://www.industrialinfo.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/industrial-info-resources/posts/?feedView=all
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-lewis-5266113/

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!

About IIR News

IIR News is a trusted source of news for the industrial process and energy markets, powered by Industrial Info Resource's Global Market Intelligence (GMI).

About Industrial Info Resources

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 250,000 current and future projects worth $30.2 Trillion (USD).