WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

In May 2017 the Information Commissioner announced a formal investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes. The investigation is one of the largest of its kind and is ongoing. This page will be updated as and when developments arise.

In May 2017 the Information Commissioner announced a formal investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes. The investigation is one of the largest of its kind and is ongoing. This page will be updated as and when developments arise.

The analysis of Internet of Things (IoT) data is quickly becoming a mainstream activity. I’ve written about the Analytics of Things (AoT) before (some examples here, here, and here). For this blog, I’m going to focus on a few unique challenges that you’ll most likely encounter as you move to take IoT data into the AoT realm.

Workplaces and workflows will change as more people work alongside machines

As machines increasingly complement human labor in the workplace, we will all need to adjust to reap the benefits.

The best analytics are worth nothing with bad data. The importance of understanding and working on all components of the insights value chain is mission critical.

In real life, in the natural course of conversation, it is not uncommon to talk about a person you may know. You meet someone and say, “I’m from Sarasota,” and they say, “Oh, I have a grandparent in Sarasota,” and they tell you where they live and their name, and you may or may not recognize them.

An email from Aleksandr Kogan sheds light on exactly how much your Facebook data reveals about you, and what data scientists can actually do with that information. The researcher whose work is at the center of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data analysis and political advertising uproar has revealed that his method worked much like the one Netflix uses to recommend movies.

Découvrez le pays d’origine de chacun des 34 460 065 Canadiens avec notre carte interactive.

Data about exercise routes shared online by soldiers can be used to pinpoint overseas facilities. Sensitive information about the location and staffing of military bases and spy outposts around the world has been revealed by a fitness tracking company.

...it forces CEOs to rethink how companies execute, with new business processes, management practices, and information systems, as well as everything about the nature of customer relationships. I’m seeing leaders who get this. They’re all over it: they want to launch five transformation initiatives right now; they’re talking to me and every digital leader they know about where the technology threats are coming from; and they’re hiring the best people to advise them. Yet I’m shocked by—even fearful for—the many CEOs I know who seem to be asleep at the switch.

Over 1 billion activities, 13 trillion data points create the ultimate map of athlete playgrounds.

It may come as no surprise that technology-centric roles stole the show among emerging jobs in the United States, but the prevalence of machine learning and data science roles and skills indicate a shift in the types of technology we can expect to be using in the near future, as well as what professionals should be preparing themselves for.

Having an academic background and a comprehensive suite of skills were also strong trends, especially among professionals who are now machine learning engineers and data scientists. Both of these roles are also often held by professionals with 10 years or more of professional experience, so for those just starting out and having trouble landing one of these titles, don’t be discouraged!

It’s always a good reminder that soft skills will always be important, no matter the profession. The ability to collaborate, be a leader, and learn from colleagues will stand out in interviews, and even more once starting a job.

Google has gathered so much data, in so many areas, that it’s now crunching it together and creating features that Apple can’t make—surrounding Google Maps with a moat of time.

You can learn a lot about an area just from the cars parked on its streets.

So leaders need to focus on asymmetrical rivals and unlikely allies, on hackers and hobbyists, on rooftop solar panels and 3-D printers. They must also adapt their strategies to the possibility of shared infrastructure, to data that wants to be big, to the implacable embrace-and-extend bear hug of Google and Amazon and the National Security Agency. Conventional business models may be simultaneously too big and too small. How should executives respond? Here are the four major drivers of the new industrial architecture and the key strategic imperatives for companies.

In an ongoing effort with Boston-area hospitals, including the Boston Medical Center and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, we found that we could predict hospitalizations due to these two chronic diseases about a year in advance with an accuracy rate of as much as 82%. This will give care providers the chance to intervene much earlier and head off hospitalizations.

Majority of websites are generic, one-size-fits-all, and unvarying. And email isn’t much better with manual input, static cadences, and fixed content. Marketers and audiences deserve better, though. As big data, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and deep learning become larger influences and more attainable, now is the time for digital marketers to seize upon the potential these technologies offer. Brands can now build custom on-site and email experiences for individuals that are automated and personalized by incorporating predictive modeling, journey mapping, and algorithms.

IBM data scientists break big data into four dimensions: volume, variety, velocity and veracity. This infographic explains and gives examples of each.

Use Redash to connect to any data source (Redshift, BigQuery, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and many others), query, visualize and share your data to make your company data driven.

The graph represents a network of 3,518 Twitter users whose tweets in the requested range contained "(Artificial Intelligence) OR #AI", or who were replied to or mentioned in those tweets.

Capgemini’s 2017 Edition of TechnoVision presents 37 compelling technology trend building blocks of inspiring, challenging, and disruptive perspectives.

The most anticipated slide deck of the year is here. Key takeaways:

• Global smartphone growth is slowing: Smartphone shipments grew 3 percent year over year last year, versus 10 percent the year before. This is in addition to continued slowing internet growth, which Meeker discussed last year.
• Voice is beginning to replace typing in online queries. Twenty percent of mobile queries were made via voice in 2016, while accuracy is now about 95 percent.
• In 10 years, Netflix went from 0 to more than 30 percent of home entertainment revenue in the U.S. This is happening while TV viewership continues to decline.
• Entrepreneurs are often fans of gaming, Meeker said, quoting Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and Mark Zuckerberg. Global interactive gaming is becoming mainstream, with 2.6 billion gamers in 2017 versus 100 million in 1995. Global gaming revenue is estimated to be around $100 billion in 2016, and China is now the top market for interactive gaming.
• China remains a fascinating market, with huge growth in mobile services and payments and services like on-demand bike sharing. (More here: The highlights of Meeker's China slides.)
• While internet growth is slowing globally, that’s not the case in India, the fastest growing large economy. The number of internet users in India grew more than 28 percent in 2016. That’s only 27 percent online penetration, which means there’s lots of room for internet usership to grow. Mobile internet usage is growing as the cost of bandwidth declines. (More here: The highlights of Meeker's India slides.)
• In the U.S. in 2016, 60 percent of the most highly valued tech companies were founded by first- or second-generation Americans and are responsible for 1.5 million employees. Those companies include tech titans Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook.
• Healthcare: Wearables are gaining adoption with about 25 percent of Americans owning one, up 12 percent from 2016. Leading tech brands are well-positioned in the digital health market, with 60 percent of consumers willing to share their health data with the likes of Google in 2016.

In less than a decade, Big Data is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Who’s using it? How are they apply data? What are they achieving?Here are 37 Big Data case studies where companies see big results.