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organizational use of Big Data

read to prepare yourselves for session 26

first, what is Big Data?

1. Big Data in Wikipedia
2. Infographic: the potential of big data

You might also want to read

• the web page announcing the May 2011 publication of Big Data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity by the McKinsey Global Institute
• then download and read the Executive Summary. We will ask ourselves some questions about what it has to say, and use those questions as a framework for discussion.
  You might find it well worth your time to download and save the full report, to keep in your personal professional digital library.

things we'll talk about

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• plan to discuss what big data is and than explore examples from companies/organizations we are familiar with (e.g., retailers accumulating data from checkout lanes and reviewing purchasing trends over time; Google studying search trends and result selections and using the data for unexpected benefits)
• ponder the consequences of the explosion of data collection and storage by organizations
• what can organizations learn by studying their big data?

Then, how can it be used?

1. Internet Evolution: Introduction to business analytics [click the questions on the left to view helpful videos]
2. Wikipedia: Business Analytics

things we'll talk about

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• plan to discuss some of the examples of the application of business analytics that you saw in the Internet Evolution videos
• how do business analytics suggest a change in the way we do things in organizations today?
• does this kind of data collection and exploitation bring up any privacy concerns?