information is the new oil

INFORMATION IS THE

NEW OILDRILLING NEW

SOURCES OF INNOVATION

1

Peter Hinssen, editor

“ Information is the new oil.”

is the first in a series of thought-provoking

booklets that Across Technology will be

publishing this year, sponsored by EMC

Greenplum. These booklets are an element

in the Data Science Series, which is also

a series of events, and a website:

www.datascienceseries.com

Publisher:

Across Technology

Editor:

Peter Hinssen

Executive editor:

Philippe Gosseye

Contributing editors:

José Delameilleure, Hans Vandenberghe

Layout:

Stijn Van Herck

SPONSORED BY

Markets are fast disappearing, and being replaced by networks. Networks of intelligence.

Consumers can’t be controlled anymore, and become active, and are turning markets into

dynamic systems. The age-old subject of marketing is being redefined.

Companies used to have time to respond. But, these days, their clock-speed is falling behind and

many are running behind the facts. Ailing companies are realizing that they are out of tune with

trends, with consumer behavior and don’t have the right insights anymore. Many companies

are running blind. Information is becoming stale faster than ever. Access to information is

critical, but the amount of information seems to be exploding, and it almost seems pointless to

try and keep up. Intelligence is key. Insight is crucial. And information is the new oil.

Data is no longer the data we expect it to be. Data has not only turned into Big Data, waiting

to be explored. Data has also become Fast Data: we no longer have the luxury of analyzing

customer behavior after their purchase, we want to know what they will buy immediately.

Data has also become Live Data, as consumer behavior is no longer explained in long-term

trends. Above all, data has become Context Data, as we cannot analyze the essence in

isolation, we need to analyze the context as well.

With so much data available, information is gushing at us from different ‘wells’. Holding the

power in an industry is not a question of getting as many oil wells as possible. In actual fact,

the single biggest asset your company has lies in its ‘refining capacity’. It’s not about the

amount of data, it’s about your ability to spot the patterns in that information.

With this booklet, we want to offer you the views of innovation technology guru Peter Hinssen

on the way markets are changing and how you can make informed use of these trends to

strengthen your company’s position. To keep you informed on a constant basis, we have created

the Data Science Series website (www.datascienceseries.com), offering you case stories

from your peers, valuable insight into market research and an overview of the Catalyst partners

that help EMC Greenplum bring the right building blocks to the market. Allowing you to build

the right ‘refinery’ for all the information that is coming your way.

Make sure you don’t miss the installments of the series. Please contact your local EMC

Greenplum organization to obtain all of these booklets.

3

INFORMATION IS THE

NEW OILDRILLING NEW


1


ANALYZING CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR

PREDICTING WHAT HAPPENS

NEXT


3

THE AGE OF DATA-DRIVEN

MEDICINEBIG DATA HELPS REVEAL HIDDEN HEALTH TRENDS

AND BUILD RISK MODELS

2


OPEN DATA POWER

SMART CITIESHOW BIG DATA TURNS EVERY

CITY INTO A DATA CAPITAL

4


Dear readeri

04 4

THings Happen fasTer every day.Trends maTerializefasTer every day.

Have you ever noticed that things are going faster than they used to? Have you ever had the

feeling that the world is speeding up, and that you’re just not going fast enough? Have you ever

thought that it never seems to slow down, but things just keep moving quicker and quicker?

You’re not alone.

Occasionally, when we watch a television show from our childhood, or take in a movie on TCM

from a couple of decades ago, it’s not the clothes, homes or cars that strike us most as being out

of touch, it’s the amazing slowness of life back then. And we all wonder how we could have ever

watched those movies and TV shows when we were younger.

The unbearable slowness of the past.

Things happen faster every day. Trends materialize faster every day. Novelties wear off sooner.

Old news gets older faster with every passing day. Speed is the game, and this whole world

seems caught up in an ever faster pace, a circle of increasing velocity.

This is not necessarily a problem. As long as you can move faster than the market.

1. How long does it take to get anyTHing done around here?

When I visit a company, I have one simple question: “How long does it take to realize

anything around here?”. This is not a loaded question. It’s a genuine question of interest. And

it’s important. So think about this in YOUR organization: “How long does it take to realize

anything around here?”.

You are in a brainstorm, the group has a brilliant idea, you spec it out, you get approval,

then how long does it take to have a finished product, a new service, fully rolled out to your

customers? How long does that take? My favorite person to ask is typically the CIO,

the Chief Information Officer, because they’re often the most honest and unbiased officer

in the company.

01

The general theory of relativity

5

6

2. How quickly does your marKeT change?

And then I ask a second question: “How quickly does your market change?”. The CMO, the

Chief Marketing Officer, is often my favorite person to answer this one. As they are in charge

of marketing, they should know how fast the market moves, right? Surprisingly, the answer to

that second question is, today, more often than not: “Our market now changes more rapidly

than we can adapt.”

So, we have our problem.

In today’s fast-paced and increasingly speed-driven society, markets evolve

more quickly than companies can adapt. That’s not a problem. That’s a Big Problem.

I love formulas. Adore them. And this one is a simple formula:

Now this used to be different. In the past, markets did not evolve faster than companies.

Companies still had enough time to innovate, adapt and evolve faster than markets. As a

matter of fact, companies dictated the rate of change of markets. Carmakers would dictate

which novelties would be in our cars, telephone operators would dictate when new service

features would be available, soda companies would dictate which flavors would be available,...

But all that has changed. Markets have evolved faster and faster, and companies have not

evolved fast enough.

(MARKETS)

(CÓMPANIES)

WHERE V STANDS F0R VEL0CITY

01 The general theory of relativity

INTERNAL CL0CK

CCCCCLLLLLL00000CCCCCCKKKKKSSSSSSPPPPPEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDD

EXTERNAL CL0CK

7

Einstein will forever be remembered for his treatise on the ‘General Theory of Relativity’. This

mathematical tour de force, that was barely understood by any of his peers when it came out,

was based on a very simple principle: everything is relative.

Basically what the General Theory of Relativity said is that everything is fine according to the

laws of Newton when you move slowly, but when you move really fast, close to the speed of

light, than everything changes and the laws of physics as we know them don’t apply anymore.

That’s exactly what I think is happening today. Our laws of marketing, our laws of dealing with

consumers and the way we build organizations worked just fine when markets were slower

than our own capacity. But when markets heat up and become ‘faster’ than us, the laws as we

know them don’t apply anymore, and everything changes.

Everything is relative. And when markets change faster than companies, I believe that we get

into a situation when markets will ‘flip’. They will flip in favor of the consumers. Not in favor of

the old masters anymore.

I like to use the term ‘Clock-speed’. You might remember clock-speed as a feature

of computers a while ago. Nowadays, we don’t really care because computers

are fast, but in the ‘old days’ when computers were slow, we used to worry about

clock-speed. The term comes from the little clock inside computer which would

determine at which ‘speed’ your computer would run. And so, a ‘2 Megahertz’

computer was half as slow as a ‘4 Megahertz’ computer. Silly old world.

But think about this simple thing: how slow does your internal ‘clock’ tick? And

how fast does your ‘external’ clock tick in your market? And how do they compare?

CONSumERS aRE gEttiNg vOCal

8

Marketing was invented to help Sales. That’s the story that the giants of Marketing like to tell.

Marketing was created to generate ‘insight’ into what consumers wanted, so that companies

could produce exactly what the market ‘wanted’.

But times have changed.

In the beginning, marketing

was really about relaying a

message from the Producer

to the Consumer. And it was a

one-way conversation.

When a company had a new product, or had developed a new service offering, they wanted to tell

the market. And that’s exactly what marketing did. The clever marketers of a company would hire

the clever Don Drapers of this world to craft a clever message they could hurl onto the radios and

television screens of the consumers.

And then the consumers started getting vocal. They woke up. They wanted to be heard. They

wanted to be involved. The consumer become ‘engaged’ and the power based shifted. It was not

enough to have a message to the consumer, companies needed to build a ‘conversation’ with the

consumer. The monologue became a dialogue between Producer and Consumer.

ONE WAY!

“Let’s talk about it”

When markets stop being markets

02

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But that was just the beginning. The advent of the New Normal accelerated this. Marketers

quickly seized the opportunities of social media, and became ‘conversation managers’ who

needed to understand how to converse with their consumer base.

But, all of a sudden, markets stopped being markets. markets turned into networks

of intelligence.

These days, consumers are not just dumb individuals, but have become extremely informed

networked thinkers. Consumers will seek information, seek advice and get informed by their

peers who are easy to reach. They will trust each other more than some commercial message

aired or played on TV or Radio. Consumers have found each other. No way this box of Pandora

will close again.

Funnels have been used in marketing forever. The idea is simple: there is a population out

there of potential users of your product or service. This is your universe. But not everyone

will buy. You can’t convince everyone to take your offering. Your job as marketer was to take

this universe through the funnel. Understand who your prospects are, who would really be

prospective buyers of your offering. One step further in the funnel are really qualified leads,

people that ‒ when given the right information ‒ will definitely want to buy. And you would

guide your leads through the funnel until that final decision point: the Moment of Truth. The

Moment in the store where they take YOUR product instead of the other brand, the Moment

where they pick up the phone and order YOUR service instead of the alternative. The funnel is a

powerful metaphor. But the funnel doesn’t work when your market has become a network of

intelligence.

Present-day consumers have the power and the ability to inform themselves. They gather

intelligence from peers, from friends, from the network. They trust the network more than they

trust you. The funnel doesn’t work anymore.

The funnel has become a loop.

Before a purchase, consumers will inform themselves by gathering all the information neces-

sary. TV and Radio are, of course, in the mix but, more and more, they will seek out websites,

02 When markets stop being markets

10

blogs, experiences on Facebook, Twitter, anything in fact. And when they get to the Moment

of Truth they will be influenced more by their own ‘network of intelligence’ than by your

marketing efforts.

Surprisingly, AFTER the Moment of Truth they will keep communicating with the network.

They will talk about their purchase, about their decisions, and about their experiences. In some

cases consumers will actually spend more time doing this AFTER the Moment of Truth than

BEFORE the Moment of Truth. This means that the old Funnel has become a loop. Exit Funnel.

Hello Loop.

But it also means that the days of the power-balance between Producer and Consumer

have fundamentally changed. Forever.

Markets have now become Networks of Intelligence. And are in constant flux. You can’t ‘control’

a market anymore. You actually have to work very hard to ‘follow’ a market, and then ‘observe’

the flux in that market. Forget control.

The new paradigm will have consumers being more informed than you, in markets that

have become networks, and that can change and adapt faster than you can. It’s a whole

new ball game.

11

012 12

THe amounT of Traces THaT we leave Today is sTaggering.

Information becomes the new oil

The key to solving this conundrum is Information. Information has become the new Oil. If you want

to make sense of all that is happening in a market, you have to gather input. That hasn’t changed.

But the way to harness information is completely different from market intelligence of the past. In

the past, we would ask customers what they wanted. If your sampling was big enough, you got an

accurate ‘reading’ of your market, and you could base your offering on that prediction.

Three reasons why that doesn’t work anymore:

Averages

Marketers like averages. They like to lump people together in categories so they can label them.

‘Single Moms’. ‘DINKs: Double Income, No Kids’. That’s why, for example, in television, series and

even whole TV stations have been designed exactly for the group of people that are put into the box:

“Double Income Intellectual Yuppies with 1.7 children who drive a Volvo”. And we assumed ‒ because

of the law of large numbers ‒ that all these people who fit that category would basically behave

pretty much in a similar fashion.

Abandon that idea.

1. The old approach is based on averages. averages are out.

2. The old approach assumes things won’t change between taking the market temperature and delivering the medicine. you don’t have that time anymore.

3. The old approach is based on action - response. That doesn’t work anymore. it’s a system. a dynamic system.

4. The amount of traces that we leave today is staggering. we don’t just ingest huge amounts of information, we also leave huge amounts of information.

03

13

Everyone is unique. Everyone now has access to information, access to networks, access to

each other. We don’t WANT to be average. We all WANT to be individuals. Unique, one-of-a-kind

personalities. Not a number. Not a label on a box with other people.

People want to be treated as individuals. They want information tailored to THEM, not to the ‘1.7

children with a Volvo’ category. They want personalized, highly tuned messages, offerings and

services for them. People don’t want to belong to a category anymore. People don’t want to be an

average.

But the downside of that is that we now have an explosion of information. Modeling the whole

customer database in a number of simple to manage categories is ‘passé’. We now have to

construct our information universe where everyone is unique. Enter Big Data.

Timing

We used to have oceans of time. The clock-speed worked with us. Now it works against us.

Markets change faster and faster, and we have to process information faster and faster. There

is no point in knowing everything about your customer four minutes after he walks out of your

store. There is no point in knowing everything about your online customer four seconds after he

leaves your website. Or four milliseconds for that matter.

We used to have time to process our databases. We would build models, and standard queries,

and run reports. Some intrinsic customer segmentation reports could takes weeks to gather all

the input, churn the facts and turn out the nice gleaming glossy report. But that is old-school.

When markets become networks of intelligence you don’t have that luxury anymore. You don’t

have the time anymore to churn. You have to move faster. You have to up the ante. You have to

boost your clock-speed. Enter Fast Data.

Dynamics

We used to be able to treat data as relatively static. Information that we gathered from customers

didn’t fluctuate that much over time. Of course consumer habits would evolve, and change,

but slow enough for our modeling to work. We could assume that if we ran some tests on a

small sample of a population, we would get the same response as if we’d scaled that to all our

customers. It was essentially an Action-Response system.

03 Information becomes the New Oil

14

But that is pre-Flip. After the Flip, the markets become a network, where the response is not

just based on all the inputs, but on the interactions and the dynamics of the network behavior.

We have to look at a market not as an input-output system, but as a dynamic system. Enter Live

Data.

Fingerprint

Finally, the amount of information we would store on a customer was simple, and relatively basic.

What did they buy, where and when? All straightforward enough. Maybe traces, every so often, to

see if the purchase was the result of a special offer, a marketing program or a campaign.

Nowadays, the picture is a little more complex. When a customer makes a purchase they will base

their purchase on what they have observed, seen, discussed online. After they make a purchase,

they will tweet about it, post on Facebook, pin on Pinterest or whatever. They will leave a digital

footprint as a customer that gives all the ‘context’ of a purchase, instead of the naked ‘essence’ of a

purchase: product and price.

When we want to really understand customer behavior, we must take into account this context

rather than the essence. That means we have to look at a customer’s digital footprint, which is

much, much larger than the old ‘basic’ facts. It’s like a diary where you would put ‘Hawaii, May

1999, Vacation’. That’s the essence all right, but the context would be the pictures of your holiday

to Hawaii, which show the rocky cliffs, the sandy beaches, the gorgeous weather, the weaving

palms, that amazing banana Dacquiri... You get the picture.

Forget essence as the source of information. Enter Context Data.

If you put all that together, the world of information suddenly becomes much more alive. Big

Data, Fast Data, Live Data and Context Data. And if you’re really clever, you will probably come up

with a whole lot more types of relevant information, for turning data into insight.

15

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people will Be creaTive in THinKing up new derivaTives of informaTion THaT Have value, and wHicHcan Be Traded.

We’re all in the informationbusiness now

One of the characteristics of the era we live in, is that everyone seems to be in the information

business nowadays.

As a matter of fact, those companies which understand what the power of information can bring,

will probably excel in the post-Flip era. But you have to be prepared to completely rethink your

business model, and your current relationship with the customer. Be prepared to invert how you

think about information.

Many companies, till now, have used information as ‘secondary’ input: information was used to

help in the primary process of dealing with their customers. It was useful, helpful and sometimes

essential, but it was not their core business. But ‘the times they are a-changing’…. These days, at

some companies, information is becoming ‘primary’ ‒ the core offering of the company.

Nike

Imagine a company like Nike. I adore Nike for their power in branding, their products, their style.

Nike is an admirable company. But Nike is also extremely interesting in terms of how they are

looking at the world that has become digital.

Nike+ was launched years ago as an experiment. A joint product development between Apple and

Nike, that produced probably the most advanced, hi-tech set of running shoes in their time. You

could synchronize your iPod to play those songs that would match your jogging pace, and after a jog

you could upload your run to the Nike+ community to share.

All of a sudden Nike was not just selling shoes to customers, but was getting constant feedback on

how their shoes were being used. Or not used. In any case, it was getting an enormous amount of

information. Nike via the Nike+ community started getting constant updates on where people were

jogging, when they were running, what their favorite jog paths were, where they slowed down,

where they paused, where they rested, where they met other people. Suddenly, Nike was gathering

an amazing insight into how their products were being used.

04

17

Nike clearly saw the potential, and went for it. They pulled all the stops on digital and pushed on

at a lightning pace. Next, they introduced the Fuelband, a bracelet that traces your daily activity.

Granted, it was rather limited at the start, but consider this: Nike+ allowed Nike to ‘see’ what their

customers were doing when they jogged, but this bracelet would allow Nike to have contact with

their customers all day long. The first version monitors your steps, but what if Nike were to add a

heartbeat monitor and a temperature sensor? Nike would then be able to see all day long exactly

how their customers live their lives, where they are, what they do, how fast their heart races and

how flushed they were.

Would that ‘Nike of Tomorrow’ still be in the running shoes business? No. Nike, by then, would be in

the information business.

Now, of course, Nike is not going to stop selling shoes. Probably not. But we are, with each passing

day, getting into a world where information is currency. Information is the new oil. And those who

have information will get ahead. So, Nike will HAVE to jump on the opportunity if it wants to stay

ahead. Everyone is in the information business now.

Banking

Let me give you another example. Banks have not been extremely popular lately, and the trust that

customers have in banks has been badly shaken. But that rocky-ride for the banking industry might

be just the beginnings of rumblings in the financial services industry.

Banks know a lot about their customers. They know how much money you have. They know what

you spend your money on. They know what’s coming in, and what’s going out. But banks know a lot

more. And there is a lot that they don’t tell you.

Because banks have so many customers, they would be able ‒ in a world of Big Data ‒ to do much

more with information. Banks, for example, know what you spend on your utility expenses, on your

phone bill, on your Internet bill, on your mobile bills. Banks would be able to aggregate and compare.

Actually, the bank could tell you that you’ve been paying too much for your mobile phone. But they

don’t. Banks could tell you that you probably should switch to another electricity provider. But

they don’t. Banks could actually give YOU, as the customer, an amazing insight into your personal

expenses and your personal finance, but they don’t. All they do is print you out some pointless

statements at the end of the month where they show you where you’ve spent your money. But you

already know that. That is the ‘essence’. But the banks don’t give you the ‘context’.

04 Information becomes the New Oil

18

Banks could do a whole lot more. Banks are at the heart of virtually every major moment in your life.

They are the heartbeat of all your precious interactions. But they hardly do anything with that.

Buying your first bicycle for your daughter? Banks only store the “$149.99 at Ralph’s Bikes”. Buying

that first bed as newlyweds? Paying for that lovely hotel in Tuscany? Banks only focus on the essence.

But that essence is the nucleus of a story. That essence is the hook on which to hang pictures,

stories, emotions, reviews, feedback, or even practical things like receipts.

One of the ironies of today’s shopping experience is the receipts. When you get a receipt these days,

there’s typically a statement at the bottom which says: “Keep out of direct sunlight.”. There are two

options: either you store it out in the sunlight, but then it fades after two weeks and you can’t read

the receipt. Or you store it out of the sunlight, but then you’ll never find it again. Anyway, people

almost never find their receipts. But wouldn’t it be great if your bank could offer you this service?

They already have the essence, all they have to do is add the ‘context’.

My point is, banks are not in the finance business anymore. Or not just that at any rate. They’re also

in the information business. The core financial products offered are rapidly being commoditized.

Truly, there is very little difference between the ‘essence’ of one bank and that of another. But there

will be a huge difference between the context that banks offer in the future. And that will be the

deciding factor on which bank I choose.

Banks are in the information business. Everyone is now in the information business.

Currency

Information is an asset. Information is valuable. Shortly, there will be entities which buy

information, and there will be those who sell information. Just as the world of finance has evolved,

where you don’t just sell shares in companies, but sell options, and futures, the world of information

will evolve as well. Information is a currency, but people will be creative in thinking up new

derivatives of information that have value, and which can be traded.

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The quest for patterns

In the old days, it was all about data. Companies became more and more obsessed with data.

We would gather all the data we could on our customers, and that data was used for all sorts of

analysis on where to go next. Data was stored in databases, that grew larger and larger.

But this data was structured data, and static. We would compile information on our customers

and try to ‘structure’ (or shoehorn) this into databases. Addresses. Sales figures. Contact

information. Phone numbers. And we would build models, hoping to find the ‘holy grail’ that

would eventually deliver us the magic formula to ‘control’ our customers, and ‘understand’

exactly how to play the game.

At the end of the 20th century, we realized that we had been busy creating too many databases.

So we spent a considerable amount of time trying to get all those databases inside the

company to be connected together and some of the bravest tried to put all these databases into

a totally new shiny database: the one database to rule them all. Pretty expensive, mind you.

To no avail. Just like trying to control the weather with larger and larger supercomputers, we

constantly seemed to be running behind this illustrious holy grail of data.

Today, we need to adopt a completely new paradigm when thinking about customers and

their behavior, about markets and their dynamics. We have to adopt the butterfly effect, think

of chaos patterns and think of market dynamics instead of compiling static data to eventually

‘understand’ a market.

Essentially, you can’t ‘understand’ a market any longer with a static model.

05

(MARKETS)(CÓMPANIES)

WHERE V STANDS F0R VEL0CITY

WHAT ’ S WHAT ’ S 0UTIN

Static, Structured,Secured & Steady

Dynamic, Patterns,Horizon & Flux

Enter Flux

Markets today are in constant flux. Markets have become so turbulent that it has become

impossible to ‘model’ them anymore, but instead we have to look for tell-tale patterns. We have to

understand how to turn the flux of the market into ‘insight’ and try to extract ‘intelligence’ from a

market without a complete and all-encompassing model.

The customer is at the heart of the new ‘experience economy’. The faceless, nameless consumer

has finally shifted from his plinth and the Arab Spring of marketing that has occurred in the past

decade means we have to take the consumer seriously now. Very seriously... The consumer is now

in play, the consumer is now the centerpiece that has control.

But how do we communicate with an empowered consumer? How do we transition from ‘mass-

market carpet-bombing of the consumer’ to providing a meaningful dialogue? For a long time,

companies have worked pretty much inside-out: they would think up a new product, a new

product offering, a new idea and then project this to the outside world, the outside market.

That meant that the boundaries of a company were pretty important. INSIDE the walls of the

company, we could try to compile databases and build models of the outside world. Today it is all

happening on the outside: customers are in charge. Customers are talking about you and your

brand. It’s not inside-out anymore, it’s the other way around: the boundaries have reversed. It’s

outside-in.

Today, the dynamics about your company, its products and its services are truly being lived in

the market, out there. They are being discussed online. And you have no control. But you have

to understand, you have to be able to get your information horizon as broad as can possibly be.

The online communities, the social media, the constant and never-ending dialogue that is out

there, beyond your company walls, has now become the dominant source of information. Your

information horizon has exploded. Your information horizon is expanding every day. Like the

expanding universe, that has been growing in all directions since the Big Bang.

So, consider this: what is your company’s information horizon? And how has it changed in the last

couple of years? Where do you think it is heading? How is your information horizon expanding and

reshaping?

05 The quest for patterns

22

The power of refining

When we use the analogy of ‘Information is the New Oil’, we tend to think that the main aim

is to find as many oil wells as possible. That the aim would be to build as many sources of

information, gushing data like oil gushers, and that there is an ‘oil rush’ going on out there.

In fact, there is. But maybe that’s not where the action will be. The real action might lie in the

‘refining’ process.

The Standard Oil Company does not exist anymore. Well, not in that form and under that name

at least. Exxon Mobile, one of the world’s biggest companies, is the biggest remnant of that

once mighty company, the Standard Oil Company.

The company was founded by John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller is the classic American Dream

story, a poor young man who would become the richest man in the United States through

sheer ambition – and a fair share of good luck. And by choosing the right battle.

His luck was being in the right place at the right time, as it often is. Rockefeller was actually an

accountant, a financial clerk, who happened to work at the docks when the very first oil was

being struck and who observed how prices of oil were being set.

Now Rockefeller was a very clever young man. He saw an opportunity in working on the spread

in prices. He was not a cowboy who had struck oil by digging in the ground. He observed the

flawed process of getting oil from the well to the refinery, and then ruthlessly exploited the

inefficiencies in the system. He became the country’s richest man by completely controlling

the refinery process, then the pipeline system and, finally, the entire value chain, with all the oil

sources eventually falling into his lap as well.

It’s not the wells, it’s the refining process.

Now of course, there are flaws in any analogy. But it could very well be that in the rush for Big

Data, it’s not about the wells. It’s not about MORE gushers, but it will be about how to extract

the essence from the raw Big Data. About the refining of big data. And whoever controls the

refining process will be on top.

The question for you is: are you a refinery?

06

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Big daTa is noT aBouT THe amounTs of daTa. iT’s aBouT THe cool sTuff you can do wiTH Big daTa.

24

The Value of data

Last year, MIT’s Technology Review calculated that all Twitter messages combined produce 12

terabytes of data every day. Those 140 characters a tweet add up to petabytes of data each year.

That was last year’s number of course, this year’s number will be even higher as the number

of users increases. And there’s no way of telling whether there’ll be another hype around the

corner in one of the coming years that will produce even more data.

Tweets are an excellent example of the value that data may have. A tweet is never more than

140 characters. Some tweets are simply a waste of time and energy and are not worth the

bandwidth they suck up. Other tweets have a value that can simply not be underestimated,

when they have a financial or political meaning. Just think of the tweets and Facebook

messages that started the revolutions in the north of Africa last year.

The same can be said about the data companies are collecting. On its own, some data does not

have any value, but combined with other data, or regarded in some specific context, it all of a

sudden starts making sense. You can compare data to the Lego bricks kids use to build houses,

fighter planes or robots: in themselves, these bricks have no value. To be of value, the bricks

need to be put together in the context of what you are trying to accomplish. The same of course

applies to data: in itself, it has no real value and to be of value, data needs to be put together in

the context of what you are trying to achieve:

• Data has to be categorized into what it represents - there is no point using budget

data to measure operational excellence

• Sets of data need to be complete - it’s only when you go up against

the competition that this becomes obvious

• There’s no ‘right’ solution, but it needs to adapt as the environment

in which you operate changes

• More data doesn’t necessarily mean better decisions - it all depends

on the type of data and how it has been put together

• You don’t always have the right data that you need to do the job

• You can normally buy better data – you just have to know what to ask for

• Others may have more and better data than you

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Business people, on the other hand, simply love data and can’t get enough data to extract value

from. Business people see large quantities of data as a blessing, since you can get so much new

information out of it.

While IT is thinking mainly of the cost of storing all this data, deduplicating it, backing it up at

night and managing it, big business is thinking of what it can do with this data to help it make

the right decisions. They believe better information will fundamentally change their business.

But the availability of data and information can have a perverse effect: some decision-makers

have a serious data addiction. Despite being overwhelmed, they simply demand more data all

the time and have an insatiable hunger for more information, more data. They demand another

report, yet more detail. Getting more data buys them more time to make a decision. Too much

data can seriously delay decisions. On the other hand, companies should not be averse to

acquiring new data, and storing it, even if only for future use. What we need is leaders who care

about data enough to make decisions on acquiring, storing and preserving data for the long

term.

The IT department or whoever is in charge of big data must make sure the company is ready to

accommodate new data sources. We need to answer a number of questions here:

• Who is creating data?

• How trustworthy is that source of data?

• Where is this data coming from?

• How can we filter this data by relevance?

• Is this living content or historical data?

Here’s the paradox of big data: traditional informationtechnology does not like huge amounts of data.

Perhaps this is also the right time to introduce the notion of most valuable data: big data is

usually associated with huge amounts of data, with petabyte size. But sometimes the value

lies in a limited number of data with a huge value. Big data is not something for just the large

companies, medium-sized companies can also derive value from analyzing and combining

smaller sets of data.

Let’s agree that big data are indeed a blessing. Let’s just, for argument’s sake, forget the

practical problems that come with owning petabytes of data. Let’s just focus on what this data

represents to our company. Imagine you have a wealth of data at your fingertips and possess

all the necessary tools and skills to mine it. Just imagine there are no obstacles to getting lots of

decision-supporting information for your CEO.

• How should we distribute the information

to people within the organization?

• How can we truly apply this information and

use this data for decision and predictions?

07 The Value of data

26

imagine you Have a wealTH of daTa

aT your fingerTips and possess all

THe necessary Tools and sKills To

mine iT.

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Topics for our next installmentsThe age of data-driven medicineBig data helps reveal hidden health trends and build risk models

Looking back a couple of decades, it is quite clear that medicine, and healthcare in general,

have made great strides. New drugs have been developed based on new insights into how

the human body functions. The influence of external factors on our well-being has been

documented and acted upon. Technological advances allow us to get medical results in hours

rather than weeks. But the best is yet to come. More and more data is being gathered for

analysis. Old medical records that have been gathering dust are brought to life and add to

the insights being developed by data scientists specializing in medicine. New diseases will be

detected and analyzed much quicker, and treatments for both old and new diseases will come

to the market faster.

At the same time, people are obsessing with their health. They have more access, these days,

to information and are become smarter in diagnosing symptoms. Users want to be in control

of their health. They want to monitor the functioning of their body, trying to prevent illnesses

and improve the quality of their lives. In short: people want to manage their own health. Over

the past few years, devices that give people information on their health have come to market,

and there are literally thousands of apps that help people stay in control of their health. These

devices and apps are generating mountains of data, ready to be analyzed.cPatients, doctors,

hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and scientists will all find ways of

using this data to the benefit of science and society. In this booklet, you will learn:

• How ‘do-it-yourself medicine’ will influence our consumption of healthcare

• How healthcare will be customized and tailored to our specific needs

• How big data will lead to better medicine

• How the side-effects of drugs will be reduced dramatically

• How analysis of medical data can reduce cost in social security systems

• How medical data can be combined with non-medical data to

influence people’s behavior

• How data quality will be even more important in healthcare

than in other domains.

The age of data-driven medicine is upon us. Read this booklet

to find out what your role could be in this new era.

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analyzing customer behaviorPredicting what happens next

Markets change fast. Customer behavior changes even faster. Gone are the days when

consumers were loyal to one brand or one shop. Over the years, consumers have learnt how to

compare offerings and switch from one brand to another based on a number of parameters.

Analyzing what factors influence buying patterns is key to the new marketer. This is not just

about choice, price, convenience and ratings by other consumers, but also about the shopper’s

buying experience. New applications and technological advances allow retailers to trace what

webpages people viewed before placing a purchase. And even more importantly: to detect and

measure lost sales.

Online and offline are merging, with consumers demanding the same experience when

shopping online or in a brick-and-mortar store. Likewise, retailers will be able to use the same

techniques to better understand shopper behavior. Big data analytics will allow retailers to

focus on cross-selling and improving per-customer profitability. Recommendation engines are

being optimized constantly to get the most profitable item in the consumer’s shopping cart.

By combining data, retailers may even be able to offer products and services to the customer

before he even realized he needed them.

There are numerous data sources that contribute to better knowledge of the customer. With

all that data flying round and being added together, the question of privacy pops up regularly.

Consumers are getting wary of being over-analyzed. Retailers will need to pay extra attention to

prudently manage the privacy aspects of their customer analytics In this booklet, you will learn:

• How business analytics will allow you to ask and answer more innovative questions

• How an increased speed of analytics can let you react to market changes faster

• How IT and business can work together to create value for your company

• How real-time decision-making will become possible across the entire supply chain

• How unstructured data from social media, for instance sentiment analysis,

can be combined with structured data

• How to close the loyalty loop

• How big data analysis can feed recommendation engines

Gaining market share and improving the share of wallet will be crucial in

winning that custom, and trouncing the competition. To find out what

predictive analytics can mean to your organization, please read the next

installment of our series.



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08 Topics for our next installments

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open data power smart citiesHow big data turns every city into a data capital

Cities are booming. By 2050, the world population will soar to over 9 billion people. Seven

people out of ten will be living in cities, placing a heavy responsibility/(a great burden) on

anyone involved in issues like energy distribution, traffic management or environmental

concerns. The world is changing fast and the power balance is shifting.

The power grid is a good example of how consumers are becoming producers: people use solar

systems to generate their own electricity and offer their surplus of energy back to the network.

Energy-production and consumption is no longer one-way. It has become multidirectional,

making it much more difficult to manage.

People are attracted to the city because of the wider range of services on offer. Cities have

grown organically. Despite efforts to build smart cities from scratch and manage these in an

effective and efficient way, cities will continue to expand and become more complex.

If we want our cities to survive, we will need to be smart, and use resources more efficiently

and effectively. Millions of devices will be connected to the Internet, generating and

exchanging information. Machine-to-Machine communication will become the norm, and

machines may dictate what utilities will be available to whom at what time. Making sense of

this huge amount of data will only be possible by processing it all on big data platforms.

Privacy will once again be one of the concerns to address when smart meters, millions of

sensors and devices will collect and share information. Much of this data will be open data,

available to both government and commercial organizations. Striking the right balance

between privacy and open data will be crucial to making these smart cities good places to live.

What you will learn from this booklet:

• How smart cities will reconcile growth with environmental concerns

• How open data will help governments and companies alike to manage

cities efficiently and effectively.

• How privacy issues can be addressed in the open data arena

• How several cities are already managing the complexity

of their growth

Smart cities are the future of the world, if the world is to survive our

growth ambitions. To find out how open data can help turn all cities into

data capitals, read this booklet now.

OPEN DATA POWER



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An entrepreneur, advisor, lecturer and writer, Peter Hinssen (1969) is one of Europe’s

most sought-after thought leaders on the impact of technology on society and

business. He is frequently called upon to chair seminars and consult on issues

related to the adoption of technology by consumers, the impact of the networked

digital society and the fusion between business and IT.

Peter Hinssen is Chairman of Across Technology, www.a-cross.com/technology,

and the author of ‘Business/IT Fusion’ and ‘The New Normal’.

About the editor

Peter Hinssen

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INFORMATION IS THE

NEW OILDRILLING NEW


1


OPEN DATA POWER



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‘Information is the New Oil’

is the first in a series of thought-provoking booklets EMC Greenplum

will publish this year. These booklets are an element in the Data

Science Series, which is also a series of events, and a website:

www.datascienceseries.com

SPONSORED BY

information is the new oil

Technology

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editor information

new oil peter hinssen