Big Data: The Big Innovation Opportunity
Posted on Wed, Dec 07, 2011
In the era of ‘Big Data’, hundreds of millions of devices and computers connect to the Web and create a continuous stream of data on the actions, locations, and conditions of everything from livestock to people.
The increasing volume and detail of information captured by businesses including inputs from social media, and the Internet of Things, is expected to fuel exponential information growth in data for years to come. According to the latest IDC Digital Universal Study, more than 1.8 zettabytes of information will be created and stored in 2011. And, IDC is forecasting that by 2020, organizations will need to deal with 50 times more information than they're managing today.
McKinsey calls Big Data the ‘next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity’. Manufacturers, in particular, stand to benefit greatly from the ability to harness and analyze large data sets. Five Big Data impacts include:
- Big Data can unlock significant value by making information transparent and usable at much higher frequency.
- As organizations create and store more transactional data in digital form, they can collect more accurate and detailed performance information on everything from product inventories to sick days, and therefore expose variability and boost performance.
- Big data allows ever-narrower segmentation of customers and therefore much more precisely tailored products or services.
- Sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision-making.
- Big data can be used to improve the development of the next generation of products and services. For instance, manufacturers are using data obtained from sensors embedded in products to create innovative after-sales service offerings such as proactive maintenance (preventive measures that take place before a failure occurs or is even noticed).
Radical customization, constant experimentation, and novel business models will be new hallmarks of competition as companies capture and analyze huge volumes of data, says McKinsey.
In a just published EMC survey of the data science community, EMC found that just one-third of companies polled are making effective use of Big Data. How is your organization using the explosion of new and disparate sources of knowledge to create a competitive advantage?
To discover how your organization can drive innovation and derive maximum value out of the chaos of Big Data, join us on Wednesday, December 14th at 1PM ET for a special web event on ‘Leveraging Big Data to Drive Innovation’.
UPDATE: This webinar is now complete. To watch the replay or download the slides, please click here.