Consortium Forming an Industrial Internet

US Consortium Forming an Industrial Internet
SAN JOSE, Calif. – As many as ten companies including AT&T, Cisco Systems, GE, IBM, and Intel are working with US government representatives to form a consortium to drive the so-called Industrial Internet. Their goal is to define an architectural framework for open industry standards that would serve a broad swath of market sectors from automotive and manufacturing to healthcare and the military. ... " 

And a more detailed background paper.  via Dr Shyam Sunder, Director of NIST

Analytics e-News Newsletter

Another good resource, and links to papers from Informs, the authoritative resource for modeling and business systems improvement.   Always worth reading.

Big Data and HR

In the Atlantic:  Good general, non technical piece.  True as the article says, they are watching you at work.  They are also watching you as you work in your social contexts before they hire you.  Data mining and Big Data techniques make it easier than ever to mine the social and fit the capabilities to the needs.   We used advanced analytics in HR a decade ago, now there is more data to make the results better.

Questions for the C-Suite

The earliest experiences I had with the global enterprise were working directly with the CEO.   He had built a system that ran on an early desktop, I helped with its expansion.   In that early work I learned that even back then the C-Suite cared about the direct use of computing power to help their decision making.  They also much cared about the data that would drive these systems.  There was a big gap in time before executives cared as much again.

IBM, as part of their Institute for Business Value asked a lot of executives about how they interacted with technologies. And also with each other about technology. And where they thought the opportunities and challenges existed.   This was the first attempt to study the entire C-Suite, and it was interesting to see how this fragmented with C Suite responsibilities. That had changed much since my first work with them.     ....  The scale was impressive:

" ... We now have data from more than 23,000 interviews stretching back to 2003.

Our latest study draws on input from:
Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) 884 Chief Finance Officers (CFOs) 576 Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) 342 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) 1,656 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) 524 Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) 201 ... " 

In an interesting aside, IBM's Watson AI system was used to analyze the interview data.  I look forward to hearing more about that.

It is a remarkable study.  Which also emphasizes the current opinions and their forecasts for the near future.  While it probably means most for the complexity of the large enterprise, it gives lessons to Mid Market firms as well.  In one paragraph they provide a good summary:

" ... How do you view the world?

CEOs consider technology the single most important external force shaping their organizations. Other CxOs also see it as one of the top three factors. The members of  the C-suite are likewise united in believing that an entirely new set of dynamics is emerging. 

Customers and citizens expect to be treated as individuals, which means knowing what makes each of us “tick”:  our values, beliefs, habits and quirks. That, in turn, requires much closer collaboration between organizations and  the people they serve.

Most CxOs recognize that what applies to customers  and citizens applies to employees and partners, too.  They envisage that organizational boundaries will become far more porous, enabling greater collaboration with employees and partners to accelerate innovation. They  also anticipate sourcing more of that innovation from outside. Where once an enterprise could go it alone, and  be successful doing so, it must now collaborate. .... " 

There is much detail beyond that, each using a small pie chart to indicate the changes over time.   I don't think the pies where necessary, but they were often joined by bar and time charts that indicated change that had occurred.

I attended the preview of the study, a good overview,  it would have been better to add a few case studies about C-Suite communications of data and responsibilities.   I was also surprised that little was said about funding, is it more of an issue in a world where we are automating more interactions?   How do changes in the economy change investment in digitization?   A nod to investment, which could have helped understanding how different size organizations would behave.

In particular I liked the statement about the future of these interactions:

" ... Pioneer digital-physical innovation:

The emergence of social, mobile and digital networks has played a big part in democratizing the relationship between organizations and their customers. It’s also forcing them to rethink how they work. Some 60 percent of CxOs now look to partners who will have an equal hand in creating business value (see Figure 4, foldout). And almost half are sourcing innovation from the outside .... "

Overall a good study.  provocative read.  You can get to the whole study (with registration) here.  

 Also , see their Android, IOS App: IBM IBV which covers the study and on Twitter:  @IBMIBV  I have found their stream quite interesting.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.  #MidsizeIBM

iBeacon for Retailers at Macy's

In TechCrunch: I Had known that Macy's had been doing work with Shopkick for some time.   I have the App on my iPhone.  A favorite experimental topic in our innovation centers.   " ...  When Apple, with much fanfare, announced iOS 7 in June, it also quietly confirmed a new feature called iBeacons, which uses Bluetooth Low Energy signalling to enable micro-location services and to trigger actions within apps. Now, Shopkick, the shopping app that lets you flag items you want and then alerts you in store to offers on those products and others you might like, becomes the first company to implement the technology in a retail setting. ... 

ShopBeacon, as the new iBeacon transmitter is called, begins trials today in Macy’s in Union Square, San Francisco and Herald Square, NYC, before Shopkick rolls it out to more of its retail partners across the U.S. ...  " 

PR Firms and the Wikipedia

In CIO Today:  I remember being part of a team to decide how we should react to the Wikipedia.  Issue warnings to our employees not to edit it?  When 'public interest' groups clearly would.  Or have a PR firm propose edits?  Where in between all of this does objectivity lie?   Now the WP is issuing cease and desist orders to a PR firm that has found a niche editing the WP.   Preserve general credibility please.

Impact of Simulation

Using Simulation:   Well yes, based upon my background I am a big believer.  It is an essential approach of business analytics.   It was the first analytical technique I used, to understand how defense systems would react in varied environments. Later, in vastly different domains.  in virtualized environments, we were able to construct responses in worlds that did not exist.  The method can have great impact because the results are easy to visualize and see in comparison.    I will be posting some new thoughts on this in the coming weeks.

Internet of Things and Ubiquitous Sensing

In Computing Now:  Mentions my colleague and IOT pioneer Kevin Ashton.  Start of a series that will address many of the aspects and issues in the Internet of Things.  Something to watch closely for many reasons.

" ... A pillar of the Future Internet, the Internet of Things (IoT) will comprise many billions of Internet-connected objects (ICOs) or "things" that can sense, communicate, compute, and potentially actuate, as well as have intelligence, multimodal interfaces, physical/virtual identities, and attributes. The IoT incorporates concepts from pervasive, ubiquitous, and ambient computing, which have been evolving since the late '90s and have now reached some level of maturity. It fuses the digital and physical worlds by bringing different concepts and technical components together. Along with the World Wide Web and mobility, IoT potentially represents the most disruptive technological revolution to date. With billions of ICOs and a diverse abundance of sensors, the IoT will be an enabler of ubiquitous sensing. ... "  

Wearables Reshaping the Enterprise

In ComputerWorld:   Interesting questions are raised here.  " ... Wearables will reshape the way enterprises work ...  And enterprises could be the real growth area for wearable computing
... Though wearable computing receives a great deal of publicity today, relatively little has been said about the prospects for wearables in the enterprise. That's surprising, because the enterprise could be where wearables really take off.... " 

Auction Technology

Have now been involved in several projects that dealt with auction technology and related decision and classification methods.  Both for supply side material acquisition and for classic 'auctions'  via auction houses and interactive bidding, both online and on site.   See my previous posts on this topic.

I note that there is an upcoming movie memorabilia auction being done by Bonhams and TCM.  Since much auction traffic these days is done online, I reviewed their site for the auction.  Very nicely done, with high speed results, imaging and categorization. Options for live access.   See the site here.

One failing I did see was a lack of complete tagging of individual items.

The auction starts live on November 25, 2013 at 1 PM EST and I will be following for a while.

On Positive Human Emotion

In The Edge:  We looked at emotion as a signal for understanding how people reacted to product, marketing interaction and use.   As part of our 'cognitive council' efforts.    Not sure how this relates directly, but am passing it on to others in this area.    Video by June Gruber, who is Assistant Professor of Psychology, Director, Positive Emotion & Psychopatology Lab, Yale University

Google Delivers Costco

In Wired: A competitive action with Amazon for the Holidays.  Another example of supply chain players connecting directly to the consumer ...

" Google’s stated aim is to bring you the world’s information. Now it will also bring you 30 rolls of toilet paper. .... The search giant said today that Costco, everyone’s favorite purveyor of oversized consumer goods, is joining the Google Shopping Express same-day delivery service. It’s the highest-profile new partnership for the program since Shopping Express came out of private testing and became available to the San Francisco Bay Area public in September.... " 

Global C-Suite Study

In the process of studying the IBM:  Customer-activated Enterprise Insights from the Global C-suite Study ...  Attending a conference call today about its findings.  I will write about it in more detail later this week.  How executives interact with technology has been a long time interest of mine.  Have written about this often in this space. Stay tuned.   I also see that their Watson AI capability was used to analyze input from their executive study.  For a preview, see their Android, IOS App: IBM IBV

Reducing Customer Defections

In the HBS: On reducing customer defections.  A classic case for quantitative analysis using classification methods.   " ... Companies can't afford to lose hard-won customers, but in truth some are more important to keep than others. Recent research by Sunil Gupta and Aurélie Lemmens explains how to find them. ... ".    Studying this research further.

Intel Betting on Big Data

In GigaOM:   Not unexpected, have been impressed by Intel's analytical work for some time.  " ... Intel is using big data to improve everything from manufacturing efficiency to sales, and is increasingly looking toward technologies such as Hadoop and machine learning to create new opportunities...

Big data is nothing new to Intel — the microprocessor giant has been analyzing lots of data about its chip-manufacturing processes for decades — but there’s something about the current generation of “big data” technologies that has the company excited about the future. Tools like Hadoop and techniques such as machine learning at scale are making it easier for Intel to collect and analyze everything from wafer measurements to sales figures, and the result is that Intel is getting much smarter about running its business. .. " 

Wizard Technical Events is Twenty Plus

Wizard Events announces that they have been around for twenty years.  I have scoped out some events with them.   Congratulations!  Their founder Russell Brumfield was an early innovator in this space, and is impressive in their ability to add technical components to meetings.    We also used some of his smell-sensory learnings, see his book on the subject.   Look at their global technical capabilities, Techno Chic events, and a new Planning App for setting up complex meetings.  Also add yourself to their newsletter.  Recommended.

Changing Statistical Standards

Debating a standard:

Whats in a 95 percent confidence?
Is there something special about a 95 percent probability? Absolutely not; a recent paper referred to it as "seemingly arbitrary." It's simply been arrived at through the consensus of people working in the field. It seems in most fields, people have been willing to accept a situation where, out of every 20 positive results, chances are that one of them is a fluke and will not be reproducible.

But the 95 percent rule doesn't apply to every field. In particle physics, hints of particles with greater than 95 percent certainty come and go all the time—you can get a different answer depending on how much data you have at the time of analysis. So that field has settled on a much higher standard: greater than 99.9999 confidence.    ... " 

Diagrams to Represent Competitors

New way to create infographics about your competitors.  The well known petal diagram.   " ....   The Petal Diagram drives your business model canvas ... What the chart is saying is, “we think our customers will come from these markets.”  That’s handy if you’re using a Lean Startup methodology because the Petal Chart helps you identify your first potential customer segments on the business model canvas. ... ".  

Unmasking the Puppets

From New Scientist and ACM:  An experimental method to unmask sock-puppets (usually phony paid commenters, reviewers or contributors) based on the way they write.

Six Degrees of Connection to P&G

After publishing a item about an infographic I liked,  about products we buy, it was pointed out that some of the data was incorrect.  That is true.  But I was also pointed to another infographic about c-Suite connections to P&G. With the challenge:  " .... Businesses are truly part of the world economy and this infographic shows just a handful of the ways that some of the big brands around the world are connected. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon is so passe. Try six degrees of Procter and Gamble for a real challenge ... " .  I would point out that this is not an infographic but an interactive connectivity graph.  The connectivity implied here is any former alumni relationship with P&G.

Click anywhere on the graphic to show full page and enlarge. 
This graphic is also from http://visual.ly 

Cognitive AI Apps in the Cloud

More on the IBM giving access to Watson technologies to allow the building of cognitive Apps in the cloud.   A good direction.  The App style of infrastructure would allow lots of new experiments by developers.   And it is experiments we need.  AI integrates, people, decisions, and technology.   This means the need for experiments to see how to make this work. Another step forward for intelligence applications.   Look forward to a closer look.

Amazon's Business Models

In the HBR:  Indicating that they constantly audit their business model.  Which has led to increases in the number of US warehouses, and their recent proposal to use the US postal service for Sunday deliveries in select regions in the holiday season.  This would lead to me that they are using predictive supply chain models to do early tests on these proposals.

Mining Health Care Information

In Freebeacon: How can social media information be mined for indications of health related behavior?  " ... Specifically, NLM will look at the “value of tweets and other messages as teaching tools and change-agents for health-relevant behavior.”  “The overarching objective of these studies is to obtain a richer understanding of how consumers, clinicians, researchers actually look for the health-related information they seek, and what they do with what they find,” NLM said in a response to frequently asked questions about the project. ... " 

Trolling IKEA

In Adage: We have an Ikea store nearby.  The number of items they have is so large that it is hard to believe anyone can recognize one that is out of place.  So a design agency surreptitiously placed a product there in the right context, and watched what happened. Includes Video.  Probably illegal or at least unethical,  or do they need to place a sign at the entrance saying that  non Ikea products cannot be placed on the shelves?  Have to admire the sheer creativity.

Defensiveness in Communications

In the HBR:  I like this argument about not being defensive in communications.  Found myself in this position.  And has some practical methods to implement it that I will try.

Data is Decentralized

An aspect I had never thought about very much, but very true.

" ... Let’s look at IT in a simple way. There are users, there are applications, there is hardware and there is data – just four distinct things that work together in one way or another.

Users run applications to create and manage data, whether it’s data in a database or in a file. The applications are, of course, shared to some degree. In the typical corporation there are thousands of applications, with each user employing only a selection of them. That’s easy enough to accommodate. Hardware can vary in its characteristics. Users have end node hardware (mobile phones, tablets, PCs, etc.), and to coordinate that we have networks and server hardware. ... 

Data doesn’t just need to be shared; in many instances it needs to be shared concurrently. It also needs to be secured, and it needs to be recoverable in the event of some technology failure. Those are, of course, largely solved problems, but they complicate matters. And what complicates life much more is that there are many databases and data files. ... " 

Neuromarketing Course

NeuroRelay reports on a free online neuromarketing course that may be of interest. Recall I had previous connections with startups in this area like Buyology Inc..   " ... The course will go through to the basic concepts of the human brain, the elements of the consumer mind, how it is studied, and how its insights can be applied in commercial and societal understandings of consumer behavior. Independent on your background, you will be well equipped to understand the basics of human decision making, and the role of the brain in this process. This course further offers a good understanding of how the triangulation of economics, psychology and neuroscience is employed to understand consumer behaviour and communication effects ... " 

Coke Online Mag Succeeds

Coke has an online magazine.  Why does one of the best known brands in the world need its own magazine?   Not sure how this would work with much less known brands, but I like the characteristics they are requiring for articles in the magazine.  Apparently very successful.   In Smartblogs.

Amazon Does Data Streams with Kinesis

Amazon, like may other players in the space, is now addressing the element of Big Data that looks at big dynamic of high speed, real time data streams.   The legendary 'fire hose' of data produced by applications like Twitter.   In Ars Technica.  You can sign up for a limited preview of their Kinesis offering now.

A Look at SAP Lava

From a SAP community blog. Was involved fairy early on with SAP's Business Objects data visualization play.  We approved it for use in the enterprise.  New is a redesign of SAP Lava that addresses visualization to support better design.  Now examining for an application.  " ... Project LAVA was inspired by visualization experts such as Stephen Few, David McCandless and Prof. Hichert but goes beyond the academic through adaptations to SAP needs and the frontiers of interactivity, multi-device distribution, and high system performance. .. " 

Augmented Pixels Continued

Recently brought to my attention this augmented reality delivery company: Augmented Pixels  (Formerly AR3D ) advertising, sales and entertainment implementations.  With development offices in the Ukraine and Russia.   Their Blog.  An interesting interview with their CEO in Forbes USA on augmented reality.  A library of over 100 use cases  developed using AR.  I found this latter slide share very intriguing for use with potential customers in the space.

10 Companies Whose Products You Buy

A rare infographic I like. From Visual.ly:    " .... According to this chart via Reddit, called "The Illusion of Choice," these corporations create a chain that begins at one of 10 super companies. You've heard of the biggest names, but it's amazing to see what these giants own or influence. ... "  

Click graphic anywhere for full screem

Google Wins Book Scanning Case

In GigaOM: A long term suit against Google scanning and storing books.  Have followed this for a long time.  Finally decided in Google's favor, apparently using fair use arguments. " ... Google has won a resounding victory in its eight-year copyright battle with the Authors Guild over the search giant’s controversial decision to scan more than 20 million books from libraries and make them available on the internet  ... " 

Time of Day Shopping

In PopAI:  An area that we explored in our laboratory stores, but not in this predictive detail: " ... Dr Scott G. Dacko, an associate professor in marketing and strategic management at the UK Warwick Business School, published a paper Time-of-Day Services Marketing that combined research in sociology, geography, biology, physiology, psychology and marketing to create a new marketing strategy called “Time-of-Day.” Dacko suggests that we can predict when certain types of people will shop, and in turn retailers can tailor their stores for certain times of the day for optimal sales. “Night owls are more creative, flexible and drink more coffee, while early birds are more conscientious, agreeable and emotionally stable,” Dr Dacko said to CMO. “This knowledge can guide companies’ marketing tactics to increase customer satisfaction through the provision of unique time-of-day service and product offerings.” ... " 

Essentials of Business Analytics Book

A number of my colleagues at the University of Cincinnati have just come out with a new book on the delivery of business analytics entitled:  Essentials of Business Analytics by 
Jeffrey D. Camm, James J. Cochran, Michael J. Fry, Jeffrey W. Ohlmann, David R. Anderson

As they describe it:   " ... This book provides coverage over the full range of analytics--descriptive, predictive, prescriptive--not covered by any other single book. It includes step-by-step instructions to help students learn how to use Excel and powerful but easy to use Excel add-ons such as XL Miner for data mining and Analytic Solver Platform for optimization and simulation.... " 

I have a review copy on its way and will provide a description and review of it here when I receive it. I hope to use some of the case studies included with clients.  Your comments are also welcome.

IBM Announces Watson on Internet

In the NYT:   Delivered  via the Internet.   Now we await the interface needed for intelligent connections.  " ...  On Thursday IBM will announce that Watson, the computing system that beat all the humans on “Jeopardy!” two years ago, will be available in a form more than twice as powerful via the Internet.  ...  Companies, academics and individual software developers will be able to use it at a small fraction of the previous cost, drawing on IBM’s specialists in fields like computational linguistics to build machines that can interpret complex data and better interact with humans.... " 

And more, Watson as a Cloud Platform.

DARPA Learning Machines

New kinds of machine learning have been an emphasis of DARPA.  In Wired,   " ... The Pentagon’s blue-sky research agency is readying a nearly four-year project to boost artificial intelligence systems by building machines that can teach themselves — while making it easier for ordinary schlubs like us to build them, too.

When Darpa talks about artificial intelligence, it’s not talking about modeling computers after the human brain. That path fell out of favor among computer scientists years ago as a means of creating artificial intelligence; we’d have to understand our own brains first before building a working artificial version of one. But the agency thinks we can build machines that learn and evolve, using algorithms — “probabilistic programming” — to parse through vast amounts of data and select the best of it. After that, the machine learns to repeat the process and do it better.... "

Recall previously discussed, DARPA's xData Project,   I see that a number of the external links on this thread have oddly now gone away, so I have corrected them to a general source.

Storytelling Nodes of New Technologies

If you have followed this space for a long time, you know I cover many technologies and their implications.  Most of which I started looking at in the enterprise a long time ago.  One person who was on a parallel track is colleague Dr. Keith Caserta.   He has done something very different to communicate his long term findings.  He has written a science fiction novel.   I spoke to him today about his work.

Science fiction is speculative, exploratory, but also revealing in its view of our future direction.  Just finished reading it, and it is a great job. I was struck by his touching on many of my own areas of interest and experience. Also it's a very well told story, combining both an engineering view and human elements in this sometimes scary and uncertain future.   Along the way you get plausible tales of DARPA, Cyc, AI, Neural Networks, Singularities and Quantum Computing.

Available in an inexpensive Kindle edition: Soul Searching (The Nodes of God Series) by Keith Caserta

Shapeshifting Touch Display

An example of virtual interaction.

" ... The Tangible Media Group at MIT's Media Lab has unveiled a futuristic display made of atoms, not pixels. We live in an age of touch–screen interfaces, but what will the UIs of the future look like? Will they continue to be made up of ghostly pixels, or will they be made of atoms that you can reach out and touch? ...  " 

Walmart v Amazon

The last battle?  In Knowledge@Wharton.  For dominance in retail.

" ... In the retail realm, it’s a clash of the titans: Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, versus Amazon, the online giant that aspires to be “the everything store.” Both are slashing prices and increasing free, same-day and other enticing delivery-and-return services in pursuit of market domination. Amazon’s online savvy and forbearance of profit-taking are well known. Walmart, with its vast bricks-and-mortar network, is finally getting serious about e-commerce.

But with two, not just one, behemoths now cutting into profit margins in a race for market share, what are the consequences for the rest of retail? “If those two keep getting better, it’s going to be rough news for other people,” says Wharton marketing professor Stephen J. Hoch.  ... " 

Blending Data is Good

It has been some time since I looked at the vendor Pentaho.  Examined it for use in the enterprise.  I noticed that they have something called the data blend of the week.  I like the general concept, which is fundamental, we often do not consider what can be done with data we have or can acquire.   It goes beyond Pentaho's offerings.  The most recent one addresses  " ... Google Analytics and Customer Experience Data ... This week we are highlighting blending Google Analytics with Customer Support Data. The result, deeper insight into your customer needs and preferences to drive your next product planning session.  ... " .  Looks to be worth following.

DB Pedia

Can a semi-structured text database like the Wikipedia be used to extract structured data?  This is the goal of the DbPedia: 

" ... DBpedia is a crowd-sourced community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and make this information available on the Web. DBpedia allows you to ask sophisticated queries against Wikipedia, and to link the different data sets on the Web to Wikipedia data. We hope that this work will make it easier for the huge amount of information in Wikipedia to be used in some new interesting ways. Furthermore, it might inspire new mechanisms for navigating, linking, and improving the encyclopedia itself. ... "

Is this effort still active?  How has it been used to provide real value?

Georgia Tech on Wearable

What are the cultural and social aspects of wearable computing?  A Ga Tech researcher addresses.  While I agree this is an issue, you could, and some did make the case that people would not carry around devices and hold them to their ears when they vibrated.  Real or imagined benefits overrode these impressions.  Will wearables have the benefits to do the same?

2013 Business Intelligence Symposium

Register now to attend the 2013 Business Intelligence Symposium offered through the Center for Business Analytics in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati and sponsored by LÛCRUM.  The 2013 Business Intelligence Symposium will be held on Tuesday, December 3, 8:00AM – 1:00PM in the Tangeman University Center Theater on the University of Cincinnati’s Main Campus.

The 2013 Business Intelligence Symposium will offer practical examples of Analytics in Action; this year’s event will focus on “Customers, Retailers and Beyond.” Four leading business-analytics practitioners will discuss how analytics can be used to give companies the competitive advantage they seek. The scheduled presenters are Carman Allison, Vice-President of Consumer Insights at The Nielsen Company; Chris Cole, CEO and Founder of Intelligrated, Inc.; Juan Huerta, Senior Data Scientist with PlaceIQ; and Janine Eldredge-Panos, Associate Director at Procter & Gamble.

More information and registration at: https://www.regonline.com/BISymposium2013

The cost for registration is $95. All attendees will receive continental breakfast, box lunch and free parking.
------------------
A full list of past and upcoming events offered through the Center for Business Analytics is available here. Be sure to note the new set of training classes offered through the Center; only a few seats remain for the upcoming “Data Mining in the Real World” training course on November 21-22. .... 

Millennials and Shopper Marketing

In Smartblogs: The rise of the omni-channel shopper in the millennial.  The link below is also of interest and new to me.

" ... The Coca-Cola Company sponsors this blog post and leverages proprietary insights to create world-class shopper marketing activities designed to help retailers convert more shoppers into buyers.  Visit www.cokesolutions.com to learn more.

Digital media has changed the way and the speed in which people shop. Marketers must now provide consumers with a full buying experience both online and in-store, adding a new dimension to their jobs. In particular, understanding the purchasing habits of millennials, who were raised with online shopping as a part of daily life, can be a challenge since many younger consumers have different expectations and approaches to buying. ...  " 

What Drives Internet Traffic?

Mostly Netflix and Youtube.  Not surprising, being heavily used video resources.   While I am a litte surprised at this: " ... Meanwhile, peer-to-peer file sharing -- services like BitTorrent and eDonkey that use a peer-to-peer group distribution model -- is decreasing sharply as a percentage of traffic. For the first time ever, total traffic for those types of services has fallen below 10% in North America, considerably earlier than what Sandvine predicted.  ... " 

Cyc, the Enterprise and Wikipedia

Recent research had me take a look back on the Cyc project, which we had examined during our AI explorations.   We talked to Lenat's Cycorp. The system promised to encode common sense knowledge relationships and make it available for natural language search and reasoning. It is a semantic analysis of knowledge.

Although it looked very promising, we were unable at the time to integrate it into our rule based reasoning effort.  If our expert systems had seen broader use,  a next step use would have been to include corporate enterprise knowledge using Cyc.

By overlaying the Cyc structure on our internal enterprise Wikipedia?  What might this have looked like?    An examination of the Wikipedia page in Cyc. I  found the following reference  " ... Cyclopedia is being developed; it superimposes Cyc keywords on pages taken from Wikipedia pages. ... "   A paper referenced talks about the project.  A followup paper.  And a sample page is shown.   Nothing about the project seems to exist after 2012.

Not sure of the current state of this work.  Does anyone know?  References would be appreciated.

Multi Modal Drones

In Wired:  As you might expect, the primary uses here are military. " ... This Drone Can Fly, Swim, Drive, and Hop Its Way Through a Mission  .. "  But it points to the direction of automated travel. Automated data gathering.

Enterprise Architecture

Thinking Future architecture.  " ... Doing Enterprise Architecture is different from managing other type of IT or business project, as it includes from abstract level, logical level to physical level work, perhaps it’s easy to get lost or risk in modeling the universe, so is there any best practices how to partition the EA work and get the wheel running.  ... " 

Mobile Apps Drive Smart Homes

In GigaOM:  Expectes 21.5 million in US and Europe by 2017.  The definition is still somewhat uncertain.  We continue to experiment with the idea, after starting in 2001, to see how it might influence CPG product demand.   As expected, these are driven by smartphone apps.  Also discovered, that information technology and housing technologies evolve at different rates.   In examining such systems as refrigerators, we found that consumers expected a them to last 15 years, while info tech changes in n 18 month cycle. Who can afford to rip out smart house installations?

Data Science Books

Vincent Granville posts a good list of more than 100 data science, analytics, big data and visualization books.  With links to further commentary and access.  Nicely done and useful.  Continually updated.

Data Pollution on the Rise

In ClickZ:  Cleansing data.  As we start to mine all the easy big data we are uncovering more difficult layers we will need to better understand.  What are the challenges and the first approaches we should use?

Humans in the Intelligence Loop

Have you noticed?  Real humans are entering the App loop.    ' ... Google Helpouts and Amazon's Mayday are changing everything ... " .  Its long been my contention that people, properly leveraged, are a powerful add in for delivering intelligence.

Johnson & Johnson Brand Tracking

Looking for a different measure.   Portfolio oriented.  " ... Johnson & Johnson is moving to a unified methodology for tracking some of its “mega brands”, global strategic insights VP Brenda Armstead said at a recent conference. According to Warc, Armstead told The Market Research Event in Nashville, that the company was looking to become “more of a global organisation [with] standards and consistency in the way we track our brand equity across our entire consumer group portfolio”. ... " 

McKinsey on Enhancing Application Development

Always of interest.  But does this mean we can have less technical people involved?  This has long been a goal, but is not really happening.  Its still a very technical thing.

" ... Enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of application development .. Software has become critical for most large enterprises. They should adopt a reliable output metric that is integrated with the process for gathering application requirements .. " 

Comments on this Blog

Repeating my policy.  Readership is up and Spam is increasing.  All comments are moderated. I cannot read or approve anonymous comments without prior approval.  I cannot approve any comment that is not substantive to the message it comments on.  I can read only comments in English or German.

Artafact and Serious Games for Customer Insight

Brought to my attention,  an AMA Webcast on November 19, 2013 at 12 noon CST: By Research company Artafact.  and Innovation Games (who is providing the gaming expertise)

" ... How can you use gaming techniques to gain valuable customer insights? In this Webcast, Sumi Shohara, Director of Customer Advocacy for Hewlett-Packard, and Linda Stegeman, President of research company Artafact, will share how HP Software uses interactive games to engage their customers in everything from strategy and product development to marketing messaging.

Specifically they will cover how gamification techniques can help:

- Form innovative ideas to implement
- Let your customers help you determine the product vision
- Rank feature lists by letting customers choose the most important features
- Mine the return on investment customers receive from your product and services ..... " 

More information and registration. 

Grasp Robotics Laboratory at Penn

Brought to my attention, new things ongoing at the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Robot swarms that fly and cooperate.  See an exciting video on their quadrotor swarms.   I had previously mentioned here our own look at swarming robotics, but we did not foresee the flying angle. Also follow on Twitter.

" ... The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory integrates computer science, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering in a vibrant, collaborative environment that fosters interactions between students, research staff and faculty. GRASP has grown into a $10 million research center with impressive technological innovations. Pioneering GRASP researchers are building autonomous vehicles and robots, developing self-configuring humanoids, and making robot swarms a reality. Our doctoral students are trained in theory and practice and mentored to become leaders in research and education. The graduates of the interdisciplinary Master's in Robotics program are uniquely equipped to face research and development challenges of the fast-growing robotics industry.We invite you to visit the GRASP lab to experience  the future of robotics research and education. ... " 

Google Tracking Your Location

Google has a lot of power, and continues to cleverly leverage it, mixing search behavior, location and purchasing choices:

" ... Google is beta-testing a program that uses smartphone location data to determine when consumers visit stores, according to agency executives briefed on the program by Google employees. Google then connects these store visits to Google searches conducted on smartphones in an attempt to prove that its mobile ads do, in fact, work.

Google declined multiple requests for comment.

If someone conducts a Google mobile search for “screwdrivers,” for instance, a local hardware store could bid to have its store listing served to that user. By pairing that person’s location data with its database of store listings, Google can see if the person who saw that ad subsequently visited the store. ... " 

Screenwriting and Storytelling

Have examined the approaches of screenwriting for storytelling.  Not precisely on point, but worth looking at, see Blake Snyer's site.  And his book:  Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need by Blake Snyder.    How might this be useful?

Blockbuster Closes, Reopens for Liquidation

This is quite a change, having lived through the era of readily available physical video media stores. Now Blockbuster video, once ubquitous, is closing its remaining 200 stores.  Its Mail order DVD business, introduced as a competitor to Netflix, will also be shut down by mid December. This media is still available, like non digital film, at Amazon and elsewhere, but expect it to fade away.  Another dependence on fast Internet connections.

Street Light System with Audio and Video Recording

In is natural to include security and pattern recording systems in lighting.  We tested the idea for retail.  Here a new integration: 

" ... Las Vegas Installs “Intellistreets” Light Fixtures Capable Of Recording ConversationsThe Las Vegas Public Works Department has begun testing a newly installed street light system around City Hall with wide-ranging capabilities including audio and video recording.

According to the Michigan based “Illuminating Concepts,” the system’s main benefits include “energy management, security and entertainment.” The Las Vegas setup includes such features as emergency notification flashers, playable music and a sound announcement system, all controlled from an Ipad ... " 

Agile Mindsets

Agile is necessary. It should be a mindset.    But what does it really mean?  Pearl Zhu:  From the Future of CIO:  " ... Agility is the ability to adapt to the changes. At its core "agile" is a mindset, a way of looking at the world and a way of thinking about work. This mindset is influenced by 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto. It is crucial for successful adoption of a better way of working that the people in the organization begin to embrace the values and principles, and then they look at the set of practices which will work for them at the level they are at. The twelve Agile Principles/guidelines of Agile can shape 12 types of minds that integrated into which being called Agile Mindset:  .... "

Panoramio Redesign

The Google Operating System reports that the image locating service Panoramio has been redesigned to make it look like a Google Maps extension.  It was acquired by Google in 2007 and contains millions of photos.   The image display size has been increased and the interface simpler.  It makes a lot of sense to integrate images with their location on a geographic map.  I am still surprised that this method appears to be too little known.  It's like crowd sourcing location photography.  I was able to make several 'discoveries' with it.   The new connection will likely make it better appreciated.  Will the Google Maps API allow the pictures to be used? Had thought of doing a mash up based on that, but the effort never went forward.  See also the Panoramio blog for more about the changes.

Unilever's CEO Talks the Future

Why Unilever's CEO takes the long-term approach

Unilever CEO Paul Polman said his job is "to make others successful," which he achieves by taking a long-term approach based on a "deeper sense of purpose" as the company grapples with issues including corporate sustainability, food security, deforestation and sanitation. "[T]he main thing is to have a firm belief about the core responsibility of solving these challenges, and not delegating that to someone else," he said. .... " 

High Fidelity Fast Smart Scanning

In Engadget:  We have many new opportunities for scanning these days.  And more our smart phones have become scanners.   But the nature of the context can make these hard to use consistently.  Now emerges a smarter scanner designed for businesses: Blinkscan: " .... It's a device that scans images, documents or even objects like many other scanners out there, but unlike those dumb machines, BlinkScan tailors its output. Instead of producing a single image with everything lumped together, it crops out the individual items scanned (so that the background is completely eliminated), straightens the resulting images and exports them as separate files to your photo editing software of choice -- all in about three seconds. ... " 

Fading Interest in the Humanities

In the NYT:  Creating a worry in colleges.  I further observe that Its harder to justify the costs, and as most everything has an important part of underlying technology, it becomes too easy to emphasize that.  and where are the jobs to be found?   " ... Some 45 percent of the faculty members in Stanford’s main undergraduate division are clustered in the humanities — but only 15 percent of the students. ... " 

Procter & Gamble and Unilever Honored

In Mediapost:

" ... P&G ranks highest for marketing; Wal-Mart named best retail partner  ... Procter & Gamble and Unilever are in the top spots among marketers of consumer packaged goods, and Wal-Mart Stores and Target are the most effective retail partners, according to Kantar Retail's annual PoweRanking list. "In a world of increasing eCommerce, brick-and-mortar retailers have never been more open than today in collaborating to build better shopping experiences," Kantar says in the report. ... 

Procter & Gamble came in No. 1 again this year, earning the highest marks for “clearest company strategy.” And Unilever moved into second place, powered by its flexibility in meeting retailer needs and improvement in its strategic alignments. It also scored highest on “best combination of growth and profitability.” And its shopper marketing programs ranked No. 1 overall, besting P&G. Kellogg, which rose to No. 7, is the only company with sales of less than $10 billion to crack the top 10.  ... " 

Creativity Challenges from IDEO

In the HBR:   From a group we used a number of times.   For more on that click on the IDEO tag below. We practiced by setting up context creating locations.  For more about that, click on the Innovation Center tag link below.

" ... People often ask us how they can become more creative. Through our work at the global design and innovation firm IDEO and David’s work at Stanford University’s d.school, we’ve helped thousands of executives and students develop breakthrough ideas and products, from Apple’s first computer mouse to next-generation surgical tools for Medtronic to fresh brand strategies for the North Face in China. This 2012 HBR article outlines some of the approaches we use, as does our new book, Creative Confidence:  Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All. One of our top recommendations? Practice being creative. The more you do it, the easier it gets.  ... "

Army Powerpoint vs Tableau

When I first read this I thought this it gave the impression that Tableau and Powerpoint were competing for the same purpose.  I see them having the same operational purpose.  Getting a relatively non technical end user the power to produce value.  In the case of Powerpoint to organize text and visual information in the form of side shows for presentation.  In the case of Tableau, letting end users create simple and even moderately complex visualizations with data.  Same kind of operational goal, with a different kind of basic component.  Now being used in the US Army.

Mistakes Made in Machine Learning

These are some of the best known examples of mistakes often made in machine learning i.e. predictive analytics projects.    Well stated, the examples are good, and are worth repeating.

November Analytics Mag: Text Analytics

The Informs Outreach magazine this month has as its emphasis text analytics.  Always interesting, business solution oriented,  not heavily technical.  I read every one.   Subscribe.   Its free.

" ... Articles in this issue look at big data strategies for text analytics, predictive analytics and privacy, probability management to help municipalities cope with risk, and the introduction of INFORMS Analytics Maturity Model, and much more. ...  

Views from Our Top Shopper Scientist

 Colleague and correspondent Herb Sorensen writes about the shopper from the view of a scientist.  He helped us formulate some of the key concepts we used in the innovation center.   Extensive and informative article in Shopper Views.  With online retailer Amazon at its center.   Read it!    See also his book and related articles. Abstract:

" ... Selling, logistics and payment are the three principal functions of retailing. In self-service retailing, the mental selling function is largely left up to the shoppers themselves. The mental process shoppers use in serving themselves, whether online or offline ("bricks",) is amazingly similar — and inefficient.

Amazon has learned how to efficiently sell to shoppers in much the same way as personal salesmen of old assisted shoppers in acquiring merchandise, albeit now done algorithmically.
The super-efficient Amazonian selling process can be broken into five steps of moving the mind of the shopper from interest to the close of the sale. Those same five steps can be implemented in bricks stores, with phenomenal success, as has been demonstrated by one global retailer and smaller regional operators.

The advent of smart phone shopping apps (personal sales assistance,) will likely accelerate sales, but not without fixing fundamental flaws that currently impede sales in bricks stores. The driving force of efficiency begun by A&P in the first half of the 20th century, with the baton passed to Walmart in the latter half, is now with Amazon in the first half of the 21st century. However, it is the Amazonian sales principles that will identify the winner(s) of the current struggle for retail dominance. ... " 

Read the whole article.

See also his excellent book.

Machines Taking Over

Are we making it too easy for machines to take over?  In ReadwriteWeb.  Do we see early symptoms when we listen for every smartphone ring?   I have been reading a novel recently that includes, in part,  this theme.  More on that to come.  Not out of the question.  " ... What if computer code could write itself? What if robots could think for themselves and continuously learn from their environment while being fed contextual information from a vast global network of data? What if the machines could build themselves and propagate, much in the same way that mammals give birth to new mammals? ... " 

Big Data and Social Science

A number of interesting items in the Edge about the implications of new models, and most notable to me the implications of Big Data, for social science.   Social Science has always had the problem of not having enough causal elements to construct a 'science' in the usual sense.  Leaving it with a kind of physics envy.  But now, with many saying that Big Data allows the use of correlation over causation in new ways, will make it easier to make a science of social.  The data is being gathered now.   Ready to use it?

Wix as Easy Internet Presence

After mentioning the startup Waze, recently acquired by Google, I was sent a note to take a look at the startup Wix.  I was intrigued by their description of it as a means of constructing low cost web presence.   A mix of blog and site and marketing presence with advertising clout.

" ... Adding to the novelty of Wix's IPO is what the company actually does. Its model is similar to Squarespace, Weebly, and even WordPress. Wix offers web hosting and drag-and-drop website design for a clientele, primarily small businesspeople, who don't want to deal with hiring a web designer or the messiness of hand-coding HTML and Javascript. It even offer its services on a freemium model--users can put their sites online for free, although they'll include advertisements for Wix's services baked into the home pages. Wix has tens of millions of users, but its still small potatoes compared to hosting giants GoDaddy and DreamHost, neither of which has filed for an IPO yet.mplemented across homes; .... " 

Will take a closer look.

Technology and Dementia

Technology solutions for dementia care.  Here from the CACM.  An extensive view of technology current and future uses, and the barriers involved.   I am peripherally involved in a startup effort related to this. " ...  Our development of new types of mobile apps as part of the Mirror program to support reflective, creative thinking needed by carers delivering person-centered care to older people with dementia contrasts with historical use of digital technologies retrieving information for carers and triggering reminiscing by residents. While prior evaluations revealed the potential of such apps, appreciating it necessitates addressing significant obstacles, mainly the need to align app use with the range of care strategies in residential homes. Homes not only support residents with and without dementia differently, different and inconsistent care strategies are implemented across homes ... " 

Future of Cloud Computing

Recorded Future looks at the future of cloud computing.  " ... As businesses continue to modernize, technological innovation accelerates. Cloud computing is a relatively new trend in this modernization which has been growing swiftly since its inception in 2007. Companies such as Amazon and Google are front-runners in cloud computing platforms, but what other companies are innovating in the field? What business decisions are fueling cloud computing modernization? ... " 

Convincing People Mobile Shopping is Safe

In Baseline Mag: Intrigued by the element of persuasion here.  Not an argument about safety itself.

Smartwatch for Corporate Productivity

Looking at the smartwatch format as improving corporate productivity.  Seems a stretch beyond the mild improvement in convenience in carrying the things around.    Worth thinking about to get ahead of the (big?) explosion in their demand.

Google Helpouts

Google now offers a method to seek and potentially sell online assistance via video, called Helpouts.    Google takes a flat 20 percent transaction fee.  More in ComputerWorld.  Will this create a working market of knowledge?

Numbers from the History of the World

In Tableau Public Gallery.  Nicely done visualization of a large selection of key numbers over history. " ...  Julia Gusman with this viz reminds us the work of Hans Rosling whose work sets apart not just by making broad social and economic trends easy to understand but also by presenting them in a stunning way. Use the slider and follow evolutions by country over time and set the scatter plots with the dimensions you'd like to look at. ... " .    How might your company build on these results?

Telling Your Story with Twitter

An approach to tell your life story via only your Twitter stream.  Course that means you have to be using twitter all the time.   Have seen similar approaches with Facebook.  An intriguing approach to storytelling. Perhaps only for an outline of the complete story?  This blog gives a fairly complete story of the technical interests and consulting aspects of my journey.

Finding Big Data

Several recent projects have involved public big data, so have become used to the thought of seeking out such data and mashing it up with internal data.  Geographic and census examples are good examples. But how do you find the public or external data?  Mashable writes about this.   Some good pointers and hints, again I don't like the infographic form, but can live with it.

Certified Analytics Professional

Become a Certified Analytics Professional, a service provided by Informs.  Not sure how widely this is accepted by companies.  Checking into it further.  " ... Members and others interested in becoming a Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®) make plans now to take the profession's first general analytics certification exam. Attaining the CAP credential requires not only successful completion of the CAP exam, but also adherence to the CAP code of ethics, effective mastering of "soft skills," and meeting eligibility requirements for experience and education.

Next exams will be offered in November in San Francisco, New York and Baltimore. See CAP® Exam Schedule for more details and for other exam opportunities. ... " 

Innovations of Hadoop 2

Innovations of Note: " ... Hadoop 2 has brought along with it new ways of processing data and storing even more data. It suggests the Hadoop community understands the challenge in front of it — to keep innovating so users don’t have to look elsewhere. ... "

Hofstadter Making Machines Think

In the Atlantic:  An extensive article on author Douglas Hofstadter and machine learning.  We read with great gusto his book :  Godel, Escher Bach back in the 80s. Still a great readable book about the nature of intelligence and its connection to math and music.   He " ... thinks we've lost sight of what artificial intelligence really means. His stubborn quest to replicate the human mind. ... "  " ... an uncontroversial conviction that the most-exciting projects in modern artificial intelligence, the stuff the public maybe sees as stepping stones on the way to science fiction—like Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy-playing supercomputer, or Siri, Apple’s iPhone assistant—in fact have very little to do with intelligence. For the past 30 years, most of them spent in an old house just northwest of the Indiana University campus, he and his graduate students have been picking up the slack: trying to figure out how our thinking works, by writing computer programs that think. ... " 

Intelligent Color From L'Oreal

In Clickz:  New ways to market cosmetics in context.   With similarity to some of our virtual makeover work. " ... In a location perhaps better known for rats and urine, cosmetics brand L'Oreal Paris is bringing beauty in what it calls the first-ever intelligent vending experience in the New York City Subway, the L'Oreal Paris Intelligent Color Experience.
Launching November 4, the installation works as a three-step process that detects the colors in a woman's outfit, picks the most prominent and related palettes, recommends L'Oreal Paris products and allows women to purchase those products on the spot, the brand says. ... " 

Twitter Infringing IBM Patents

A piece in Gigom:  Had a number of discussions with IBM when when they were doing lots of social media exploration for improving internal communications, so not surprised of the general claim. No view of if this should have been patent-able.

Essential Office Elements and Clouds

 If we look at the triple of basic office tools:  Word processing, spreadsheets and slideshows. its interesting to see the competitors today.  Especially when we think of including smaller format hardware, like tablets and smartphones.  Notable also are Google and Apple efforts.  This CWord article suggests that MSoft is still the big player, and will remain the standard.  All empowered by new Cloud plays.  Controlling Cloud is a way to control consumer and business office infrastructure.   Useful usage statistics too.

Back to Robots for the IPad

Had cause to go back to the Robots for the iPad App, had not been there for some time.   Its by the IEEE, does an excellent job of surveying a number of robot implementation.  Interesting for both the starting student and the technical professional who wants a good survey of robotic ideas. Most instructional and research robotics, rather than industrial.  Excellent pictures, videos, interactive portrayals. Specification comparisons are instructive.  Anthropomorphisms are startling at times.  Different kinds of locomotion and navigation well shown.  Has now been updated.  Well worth the price:  Free.

Managing Supply Chain Talent

Something we had a priority for.  Something we also found to be one of the easiest kinds of talent to get outside because it is a mature idea in many industries.  Has been here for a long time.  Technology in the area has not changed very much in a number of years, it is mostly about plug and play methods with strong understanding of the category involved

Tackling the Shopping List

A problem we worked on for years.  The smart shopping list. Starting with a Blackberry implementation.  And many others.   But was that the best approach? A self contained barcode scanner was one of the solutions. Now  In FastcoLabs: " ...  So it was with some intrigue that we discovered this $80 software-powered barcode scanner, which attacks one of the classic smartphone use cases Steve Jobs demonstrated at the launch of the iPhone in 2007: keeping a shopping list.

The Hiku, as it’s called: (Former Palm Employees Cook Up Kitchen-Centric Kickstarter Project), is an example of a new wave of dedicated devices that are challenging the assumption that an app is always a good replacement for a discrete device or real-world tool. “Connected devices is a super-exciting space right now, and feels a lot like mobile did back in 2002,” says Hiku founder Rob Katcher. “It’s very wild west, very fresh.”  .... ' 

Though no longer involved in the concept, will look at this in more detail ...

Millennials and Their Devices

In Clomedia.  Good piece.  It has long been suggested that new generations are so used to new tech that they don't need to adapt to it at all.  Often touted as truth.  With implications for training, style assumptions, device choices.   I had always suspected that this is not as true as we have thought.   And unscientifically observed that case in the organization.  This article looks at surveys that seem to say this.  Self reported, it seems. " ...  Our survey results pushed back on this categorization. The survey indicates that it is the tech-savvy millennials who are feeling the most overwhelmed from being always on versus their older colleagues. Information overload was cited by 41 percent of millennials, versus just 31 percent among older generations, while technology overload was cited by 38 percent of them compared to 20 percent of older workers. ... "

Smart Homes Need Eyes

This GigaOM article comes to the same conclusion we did, that truly smart homes need to have integrated cameras, multiple sensors, with high speed image analysis that can be linked to decision making artificial intelligence.  In some cases you can replaces sight with coverage algorithms, but not when precision is what is required.

SAP, SAS and Big Data Analytics

Was an early user of SAS, but it has been a number of years now.  A move to Big Data partnership with SAP: 
Nearly every major server vendor is a SAP HANA partner -- Oracle, unsurprisingly, is the main holdout -- and many have achieved significant market success. In essence, HANA qualifies as a classic case of a vendor doing well for itself by doing good for its partners -- now including SAS -- and customers, said analyst Charles King.

In a move to advance in-memory data Relevant Products/Services analysis capabilities for businesses across industries, SAP and SAS are working together to create a joint technology and product roadmap. The solution will leverage the SAP HANA platform and SAS analytics Relevant Products/Services capabilities. ... ' 

Transferring Online Book Notes to Twitter

Here experimenting with taking a highlighted portion of a book in Kindle and transferring the highlights and additional notes to a Twitter stream, sharing my comments and a link to the book,  in the link below.

@franzd: Data Mining Standards:  http://t.co/xKXo1cOJLJ Fundamental concept: Extracting useful knowledge from data to solve business problems ...

Google Launching a Data MOOC

Google on Launching an Analytics MOOC and Taking Data-Driven Actions

" ... Analytics. It could be the deepest, darkest mystery in your organization, served up by a few select tech wizards, or it might be the solitary master by which all company decisions begin and end. In all likelihood, it’s somewhere in between.

No matter where you fit on the spectrum of analytics know-how, data-driven decision-making is here to stay. With millions of users, Google Analytics is among the tools well entrenched in paving the road to actionable data. And a business’ choices when it comes to analytics services are many, with one tool rarely being a one-stop solution (for full disclosure, GA is one of several analytics tools HBR uses to parse its online data). So not only do we have to learn how to use analytics technology, we need to become more data fluent and confident in how to go from a collection of insights to action. And we have to do all of this while maintaining an empathetic connection to our users and customers. ... " 

Strategy Arts

A couple of other pieces from Mckinsey on Strategy:  On mastering its building blocks, an the art of strategy.  In the enterprise strategic planning always seemed to be distrusted.

On Data Science Workflow

Phillip Guo on Data Science Workflow: Well worth examining: " ... Engineering the Success of Software Development    I now realize that data scientists are one main target audience for the tools that I created throughout my Ph.D. However, that job title was not as prominent back when I was in grad school, so I didn't mention it explicitly in my dissertation. What do data scientists do at work, and what challenges do they face?

This post provides an overview of the modern data science workflow, adapted from Chapter 2 of my Ph.D. dissertation, Software Tools to Facilitate Research Programming. ... "