Hype …..

15 October 2015

The problem with hypes is always that the subject of the hype will never be able to equal or surpass the expectations that created the hype. Could this now be the case with ‘Big Data’? In any case I (still) see few high-profile projects in this area, and when I do see the innovative projects, it is still questionable whether this can be called ‘Big Data’. In any case, we may still see it. Meanwhile, we at Cmotions continue to support our clients with things that matter to them…

In this context I still find the book “Competing on Analytics” by Davenport and Harris (Harvard Business School Press, 2007) very inspiring. Few take into consideration the subtitle of this book. ‘The New Science of Winning’. Because that’s what it comes down to with fact based entrepreneurship: how do I do business smarter, or how can I do sensible things in the future on the basis of facts from the past with the aim of being faster than the competition.

That is a nice change that I see. In recent years, business owners and managers have had to discover that they have data. Now they have seen that they can do more with it and that, if they take a smart approach, they can be better than the competition. In my view, our added value here is large and still growing. Two things are important in the productive use of analytics. Knowledge of methods and techniques is one of them but also understanding the playing field of the client.

Therefore, our strategic challenge is to build a bridge between our specialism on the one hand and the targeted application of our specialism on the other to give our clients more competitive power.

Based on what we have already shown in this area with various clients in the past, I await our future with confidence. Although we have our challenges too. Maintaining and leading the way in our specialism is one of them. Being able to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to hype or real sustainable developments in our field is certainly another.