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March 19, 2015

Can’t Ignore the Big Data Revolution

A new book titled Big Data Revolution documents the ever-widening impact that big data is having across the business world. “Data is the new intellectual property,” the authors write. “It can be harnessed for advantage or ignored at peril.”

In Big Data Revolution: What farmers, doctors and insurance agents teach us about discovering big data patterns, authors Rob Thomas and Patrick McSharry–an IBM vice president and a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford–guide the reader through analyses of how big data technology is impacting specific industries.

The authors use real-life examples, such as how insurance companies can use big data to write personalized policies, or how farmers can use data to enhance the yield of their crops. All in all, the authors say they have identified 30 data factors, which they further distill into 54 big data patterns.

The stories are meant to illustrate the “challenges and possibilities” that have emerged with the advent of big data, Thomas and McSharry write on their website, http://www.bigdatarevolutionbook.com.

“Our belief is that such stories provide the best way to learn about how other business leaders both responded to external change and in some cases, caused disruptive change within their respective industries. We hope that they will provide a source of inspiration, courage, and know-how, so that you can embrace big data as a means of inciting a revolution within your organization.”

While big data can’t be ignored, the book is not for everybody, the authors write. “For those who would prefer to remain working in silos, where data analysis and decision-making is divorced, this book will make for uncomfortable reading,” they write on their blog. “Organizations that do not manage to utilize their data assets will eventually become extinct.”

In fact, some may actively avoid the topic of big data altogether, including the unlucky half of the population employed in jobs that will be displaced by automation and machine learning (citing C.B. Frey’s and M.A. Osborne’s research in their 2013 work “The Future of Employment).

Like the Borg, big data, alas, will eventually–inevitably–win.

Big Data Revolution is available on Amazon for $15.15.

Big Data Revolution is available on Amazon for $15.15.

“Unfortunately, many have a vested interest in resisting the data revolution due to their fears about the impact it will have on their own professions,” Thomas and McSharry write. “It is likely that such resistance will be futile and that those who actively embrace the oncoming disruptive change will benefit most from the opportunities offered.”

Not everybody is enthralled with some of the lofty verbiage or doomsday scenarios posited by Thomas and McSharry. “Despite all the figures, though, the revolution is not entirely quantified after all,” writes Financial Times reporter Thomas Hale in a rather scathing critique of the book posted last week. “The material costs to businesses implied by installing data infrastructure, outsourcing data management to other companies, or storing data, are rarely enumerated.”

In addition to questioning their scholarship, Hale openly attacks “Big Data Revolution” authors’ core assumption that something has fundamentally changed in the world. “The book is perhaps most interesting as a case study of the philosophical assumptions that underpin the growing obsession with data,” Hale writes. “Their prose draws heavily on similar invocations of technological idealism, with the use of words such as ‘enlightenment,’ ‘democratize,’ ‘knowledge-based society’ and ‘inspire.'”

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