‘Big Data’ does it have meaning....

I observed two opposing ideas in the press this week. The first was estimates of the growth of data in this information age (known as ‘big data’). The statistics are quite overwhelming www.boardmember.com predicts that in the next 24 months more data will be created than has been created in all history. And according to IDC’s Digital Universe report the data created globally on an annual basis will leap from 1.2 zettabytes this year to 35 zettabytes in 2020 (one zettabyte is equal to one billion terabytes). Now I cannot comprehend just how much data that is, but I suspect it is a lot and IT company’s are lining up to help you mine that data and promising all sorts of new analytics and insights. This is exciting times for the growth of data analytics and may warm the hearts of some CIO’s hoping to regain the IT initiative with the help of big data.

The opposing idea came from a blog by Roger Martin on the Harvard Business Review site titled “you can’t analyse your way to growth”, his argument is that business growth is dependent on opportunities in the future and that analysis of past data is no use in identifying those opportunities. He argues that analysis of growth in most industries would show static or slow growth showing no real future opportunities, however innovative companies who look to the future rather than the past and in his words have a ‘deep appreciation’ of a customers life and what makes their life easier or happy or sad have opportunities to imagine possibilities that do not currently exist. He cites explosive growth in alternative cleaning products as an example of filling a need in a market which historic analytics would have suggested was mature with no prospects of above normal growth.

I suspect both approaches are right and wrong, the moral I take from these two examples is the need for an open mind and willingness to consider other possibilities whenever making a decision and to avoid being obsessed with technology for its own sake. After all humans are the customer.