Redefining Big Data Posted on : Jul 29 - 2015

If we're going to nominate a buzzword for 2015, big data is already a major contender for the title. It seems to be all the rage these days -- the promises are huge -- yet very few businesses are leveraging big data well. The challenge that most business leaders face with big data isn't the numbers or even the analysis -- at its core, the math is really not that complicated -- the failure exists in the underlying approach to big data. Perhaps the main reason "big data" has gotten so misconstrued is because of semantics.

When we think about big data, we think numbers, not words. We build data warehouses to collect these numbers and then we buy tools. Oh, the tools! We need tools to "dissect the data." And then we use these tools to build charts and reports. On a good week, these reports get highlighted and circulated around the office. On a bad week, they get buried in a pile of emails. Either way, none of it ever seems to matter. We are great data aggregators and then professionals at ignoring it.

There are several definitions of the word big. With big data, we most often define it as large. Digital media was built on these large data metrics; "We can track it." We started tracking every parameter we could -- clicks, page views, time on site -- to "prove" what worked, but the problem was that we never proved anything, we were simply able to show what happened. So when social media emerged and business leaders wanted our metrics, our only rebuttal was, "you don't understand..." Today, we can put sensors on anything and are collecting data at an accelerating rate, yet the same problem remains: we're accumulating data, but we aren't gaining any knowledge.  View more