Links for Sept 22 2013
- The big data Wild West: The good, the bad and the ugly — Tech News and Analysis
Quote: Ron Bodkin of Think Big Analytics discusses the best and worst practices for adopting big data technologies and actually getting results. Companies must beware of dangerous decisions, charlatans and disastrous missteps.
- Good news and bad news for CIOs – The CIO Leader
Quote: So are we seeing the start of a trend in which boards are turning to external consultants instead of their own CIOs? And is this just to validate the CIO’s views or are consultants being used to fill gaps in the CIO’s experience, skills, credibility or capability? Either way it’s a potential worry for CIOs and could be further evidence that CIOs and IT functions are not evolving quickly enough to meet the needs of the business in the digital age.
- I Don’t Want You to Humanize Your Brand
Quote: When I talk about humanizing an organization, I mean changing how we lead and manage and operate in ways that tap into the power of being human. Social media is great for that, because it allows us to be authentic, which is very deeply human. It allows us to build relationships, which is very deeply human. When we tap into that human element, we find a whole lot of power. Can this affect your brand? Sure. When I interact with the humans in your company who are supported in being authentic, I’m getting a different feeling. Those people tweeting for you are actually interacting with me. Maybe being funny. Listening to me. Telling the truth. As a human, I really like that. That glow is going to rub off on your brand–that abstraction I hold in my head about what your company/product is and what it means to me. But the abstraction didn’t get more human.
- Gartner On Big Data: Everyone’s Doing It, No One Knows Why – ReadWrite
Quote: Big Data is all about asking the right questions, which requires business context, and then iterating on your project as you learn which data sources are valuable, and which questions yield real insights. You don’t have to know the end from the beginning, but you should have a clearer view of what you hope to achieve with Big Data than the Gartner seems to indicate most have.
- How your company can start using data: Think small and internal first — Tech News and Analysis
Quote: Companies looking to integrate more data into their business decisions should start small and see what they have already, data scientists from PayPal, MailChimp and Import•io said at Structure:Europe 2013.
- Data-Driven Marketing Step Two: Tear Down The Silos – Forbes
Quote: A recent study showed that most marketers believe silos –both internal and external to marketing –prevent them from effectively executing campaigns. Meanwhile, Gartner’s prediction that CMOs will soon be spending more on technology than their counterpart CIOs has IT worried that marketing is going to start driving technology initiatives in a vacuum. How can CMOs build the collaborative relationships needed to drive revenue growth in today’s data-driven marketplace? As we continue to explore my five-step plan around big data marketing, let’s discuss Step Two: Tear Down the Silos. Now more than ever, it’s imperative for marketers to cooperation and communication throughout the enterprise.
- Hey, CIOs: In a BYOD world, your new job is service provider — Tech News and Analysis
Quote: As employees bring their own devices to work and departments make their own technology decisions, the role of the CIO has changed, forcing them to give up control. But with loss of some control comes opportunity.
- Innovate on Purpose: Innovation that’s too big to fail
Quote: The only way ideas become too big to fail and remain that way is when senior executives all agree to embrace the idea and support it not just at conception, but through development and launch. It’s always been my suspicion that this was behind what Jobs did at Apple, when he drastically cut number and range of products at Apple. When you have very few products or capabilities, they become too big and important to fail. Everyone has a stake in the success of the limited number of big projects, and the decisions of executives and the actions of the culture become much more amenable.
- The importance of the Voice of the Customer on projects and beyond | Adrian Reed’s blog
Quote: When considering changes, great questions to ask can include “Who is the customer here?”, What would our customers say about what we’re about to do?” and “Does what we’re about to do mean we’re appealing to new (or different) customers?” These are simple questions that sometimes have extremely far reaching implications, and it is well worth asking them often during change projects. In mid-size and large organisations, it’s easy for the real customer to get lost in the paperwork. In a plethora of product and system specifications, nobody asks “who is this product designed for?” Smart organisations avoid this.
- The Rise Of The Chief Data Officer Will Boost The Demand For Semantic Tech – semanticweb.com
Quote: Those companies that haven’t yet got their own CDOs onboard, or that seek some aid in running data-driven decision-making experiments before scaling them within their organizations, have another source of help they can turn to. This week, decision sciences and analytics firm Mu Sigma opened an Analytics Center in Austin, Tx. with up to 300 data scientists. It already has a similar center in Bangalore, India with some 2500 data scientists, who will work closely with the Austin staff. The company includes in its decision support stack technologies applied math algorithms in machine learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence.
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