Big Data
When will John Smith buy his next car, and what brand will it be? Which residents on Chestnut Street are undecided about how to vote? Where is the next terrorist attack going to happen?These are the kinds of questions “Big Data” is already answering. Suddenly, Big Data seems to be everywhere – on the cover of October’s Harvard Business Review, in articles about the Obama campaign, and in many other references. Big Data looks like The Next Big Thing. But many business leaders aren’t even sure what the term means.In brief, Big Data differs from traditional data on three dimensions, the “3 V’s”:
Volume – quantities of available data are so huge that traditional methods of storage and analysis are inadequate.
Velocity – data analysis happens in real time, rather than traditional batch processing like reviewing business metrics at the end of the week or month.
Variety – much of the data is unstructured, like video recordings or social media commentary, and cannot be easily analyzed in a traditional spreadsheet.
The challenges of collecting, storing, analyzing, and interpreting Big Data are daunting. But leading edge companies like Amazon are already deep into Big Data, and companies who figure out how to manage Big Data effectively will gain a considerable competitive advantage. Big Data will enable company leaders to answer questions and make predictions they could only guess at before.Beyond the technological challenges, Big Data poses a great leadership challenge. A good analogy is an airplane pilot, who has to learn to trust his instruments when he’s flying in a fog, because his inner ear will mislead him about which way is up. Business leaders will need to learn to trust their data, even when their instincts are telling them something different. This will be very difficult for leaders whose intuition and gut instincts are hard-earned.Big Data is already here, and it is changing the landscape of business leadership. What do you think – will it be a powerful tool to make the world a better place or an insidious “Big Brother” that spies on us and ultimately controls us?
