Big Data Analytics – Intelligence for Disruption

Taken together, the V-word characteristics of Big Data both identify and shape the kinds of innovative solutions that can be created from Big Data opportunities.  These solutions will tend to provide intelligence more than absolute truth.

Disruption is the Real Opportunity

Image by NASA Goddard Photo and Video via Flickr

It’s worth keeping in mind that adding Big Data Analysis to a current business isn’t the whole enchilada. Having better intelligence than the next guy is a great competitive advantage, but in itself isn’t “disruptive.” The idea that Big Data will enable game-changing new business opportunities, not simply adding insight into current processes or decision-support practices, is why Big Data Analysis is exciting.

Entrepreneurs who create new ways of doing business fueled by Big Data intelligence will dominate. The key to the difference between improving current business and innovative disruption is looking for answers to new and different questions. Sounds easy enough but that is truly difficult creative work.

Big Data Doesn’t Come with an Instruction Manual

Big Data sets don’t start with a schema model that defines the answers “findable” within them. It’s not just a huge BI warehouse. Rather, it takes a cunning mind and a dedicated soul to explore through Big Data – for example trying various map/reduce algorithms to find new patterns and assembling new visualizations discovering new ways of looking and seeing.

This skilled data mining and keen perceptive ability must be fused with an entrepreneurial mindset that is always evaluating how any new big data intelligence could be formed into new and ultimately disruptive innovation.