Richard Branson on Decision-Making For Entrepreneurs Editor's Note: Entrepreneur Richard Branson regularly shares his business experience and advice with readers. What follows is the latest edited round of insightful responses. Ask him a question and your query might be the inspiration for a future column. Q: What were your most important managerial decisions -- the ones that changed your business? -- Volodymyr Kravchuk, Kiev, Ukraine A: Most good chief executives or entrepreneurs only make three or four key decisions every year. Looking back over my career, which now spans more than four decades, there were many occasions when I got it right and a few when I did not. 1. This was the case when we launched our airlines Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Blue (recently rebranded Virgin Australia), in 1984 and 2000, respectively. Virgin Atlantic went from strength to strength, and now carries over 5 million passengers per year. 2. Related: Richard Branson on Embracing Change I rarely paid attention (which also drew criticism from some analysts). 3.
The Right to Be Forgotten February 13, 2012 64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 88 At the end of January, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, announced the European Commission’s proposal to create a sweeping new privacy right—the “right to be forgotten.” The right, which has been hotly debated in Europe for the past few years, has finally been codified as part of a broad new proposed data protection regulation. In theory, the right to be forgotten addresses an urgent problem in the digital age: it is very hard to escape your past on the Internet now that every photo, status update, and tweet lives forever in the cloud. European regulators believe that all citizens face the difficulty of escaping their past now that the Internet records everything and forgets nothing—a difficulty that used to be limited to convicted criminals. In endorsing the new right, Reding downplayed its effect on free speech.
IBM CEO Study: Openness by Social Media Is Key Enabler to Organizational Success According to the IBM CEO study conducted amongst 1,700 CEOs from 64 countries and 18 sectors, Open CEOs' identify openness enabled and supported by social media and technologies, as a major influence on their organization and its success. These organizations perform better because they are utilizing the collective intelligence, are more agile, able to act quickly to gain higher profitability and growth. The research shows that currently only 16 percent of CEOs are using social networks to be more directly involved and connected with their employees, customers and partners. In the next three to five years this figure will increase to 57 percent. Forbes reports the following key findings: Trust Face-to-face, the physical contact, creates and maintains trust on a small scale, but is the most effective. Market-driven organization Openness and collaboration with the various stakeholder groups support the realisation of a market-driven organization. By Gianluigi Cuccureddu About the author:
Balancing Intuition with Analysis Interview – Roger Martin of “The Design of Business” I had the opportunity to interview Roger Martin, the author of “The Design of Business” about the challenges companies face when they fail to balance analytical thinking with intuitive thinking. We also discuss a variety of other innovation topics including: barriers to innovation, education, and risk taking. Roger Martin has served as Dean of the Rotman School of Management since 1998. He is an advisor on strategy to the CEO’s of several major global corporations. Here is the text from the interview: 1. It is the dominance of analytical thinking which holds that unless something can be proven by way of deductive or inductive logic, it is not worthy of consideration or investment. 2. Design thinkers are capable of balancing the inductive and deductive logic of analytical thinking with the abductive logic of intuitive thinking. 3. Two main reasons. 4. 5. 6. That is a lame argument. 7. They need to nurture their originality. 8.
The Pitfalls of Prediction Prognostication is a multi-billion dollar industry. We have weathermen, Wall Street Analysts, political pundits and futurologists. They all claim some expertise. These people exist because there is strong demand for their services. Businesses need to create budgets. Messy Data The problem starts when smart people in nice suits and lab jackets proclaim that “the data says…” In truth, the data never says anything. Data is, after all, messy. Moreover,as I explained in an earlier post, the mathematics we have long used to form statistical models has been found wanting. Data is anything but objective. What You See is All There Is Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman explains another reason why our predictions often fail in this article. What he found interesting is that even armed with the knowledge that the tests didn’t work, he found himself no less sure of his assessments while administering them. Black Swans History has, in large part, been driven by the improbable and the future will be too.
What a Data-Rich Smart City Experience Could Really Be Like - Technology Welcome to the "meta-city." It's a networked urban world of smart infrastructure and ubiquitous data that could soon become the typical city experience. Just by looking around, you'll be able to see where that bus across the street is going, when the train you need is leaving, how to buy a ticket, when the weather's going to turn nasty, what's located on the fourth floor of that pretty building in front of you, and exactly where you can charge your phone – likely the screen-of-choice for displaying all this information in the smart (and, it turns out, incredibly helpful) city of the future. The meta-city is visualized in this video as a "hybrid digital physical environment" where information about one's surroundings can be superimposed in real-time to create a data-rich view of the functions and actors within a city. Explosive innovation and adoption of computing, mobile devices, and rich sources of data are changing the cities in which we live, work, and play. Image credit: frog
10 Insights: A First Look at The New Intelligent Enterprise Survey How do you win with data? SMR surveyed global executives about turning the data deluge and analytics into competitive advantage. Here’s an early snapshot of how managers are answering the most important question organizations face. Image courtesy of Flickr user gonzales2010 Last May, at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium main-stage discussion on “Emerging Stronger from the Downturn,” one panelist listened with a growing private smile as his fellow speakers described example after example of how technology-driven information and analytics applications were transforming their companies. That was the point at which the panelist, a multinational industrial COO, turned to the audience and unofficially summarized, “So, the lesson: If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” He’s right. However, the focus on exactly what’s changing can be misplaced.
Big Data, Analytics and the Path From Insights to Value How the smartest organizations are embedding analytics to transform information into insight and then action. Findings and recommendations from the first annual New Intelligent Enterprise Global Executive study. Image courtesy of Best Buy. In every industry, in every part of the world, senior leaders wonder whether they are getting full value from the massive amounts of information they already have within their organizations. Are competitors obtaining sharper, more timely insights? Full Report This article presents the highlights of our Special Report Analytics: The New Path to Value. To help organizations understand the opportunity of information and advanced analytics, MIT Sloan Management Review partnered with the IBM Institute for Business Value to conduct a survey of nearly 3,000 executives, managers and analysts working across more than 30 industries and 100 countries. Among our key findings: Top-performing organizations use analytics five times more than lower performers.
From Big Data to Big Decisions: Three Ways Analytics Can Improve the Retail Experience Despite our best efforts to collect and analyze data, good business decisions will always include elements of judgment, intuition or just plain luck. Many day-to-day decisions are made with little or no thought, because the option selected just seems “right.” Gut-feel decisions might be examples of what Malcolm Gladwell called “thin-slicing” in his provocative 2005 bestseller Blink. However, the best decision can sometimes be counter-intuitive. For example, the financial services firm Assurant Solutions wanted to improve its “save” rate on customers calling in to cancel their protection insurance. The question is not about tools or even data. Now business leaders are turning to analytics to uncover insights in so-called Big Data, the latest IT industry buzzword to hype the increasing volume, velocity, and variety of digital information. Said another way, Big Data is like a vein of gold buried under your feet. Bigger Data Doesn’t Mean Better Decisions So is Big Data really all that big?
5 ways big data is transforming everyday life — Data | GigaOM Managing the Information Tsunami to Accelerate Product Design & Development Managing the Information Tsunami to Accelerate Product Design & Development Posted on Mon, Oct 22, 2012 40 percent. Just four out of every ten manufacturers claim they have the decision-making capabilities necessary to innovate. The preponderance of information available to product development teams is growing – in volume and in complexity - at an incredible rate. Last week, Supply & Demand Chain Executive and IHS hosted a complimentary webcast exploring the roadblocks companies face managing the rising tide of data. Check on the infographic below for a quick snapshot of the challenges organizations encounter in managing the data deluge and turning critical business information into actionable innovation intelligence. To learn even more, watch the replay of the 'Information Tsunami' webcast.
EMC Shows the Power of Big Data Analytics CIO CIO — This week I attended EMC's analyst briefing, but before things started I had dinner with Jim Bampos, EMC's vice president of quality. Bampos is arguably the technology industry's leading expert in the area of customer care, with one patent in hand and two more in process. I'd also just finished a review of the use of data analytics in the U.S. election and in that exercise had been fascinated by the fact that Mitt Romney didn't use analytics properly and President Barack Obama did. Romney had better tools but outsourced the effort, while Obama created the capability internally, and the result is now history. News: Presidential Election a Victory for Statistical Modeling EMC, in contrast, is using analytics from its Green Plum acquisition to not only provide better service but to shift resources to areas where they can provide the greatest return. Why Most IT Executives Hate Valid Data Big data analytics can provide information that puts the data scientist in the position of power.
Researchers Say Much to Be Learned from Chicago's Open Data View Full Caption Robert Kozloff/University of Chicago HYDE PARK — Chicago is a vain metropolis, publishing every minute detail about the movement of its buses and every little skirmish in its neighborhoods. A team of researchers at the University of Chicago is taking that flood of data and using it to understand and improve the city. “Right now we have more data than we’re able to make use of — that’s one of our motivations,” said Charlie Catlett, director of the new Urban Center for Computation and Data at the University of Chicago. Over the past two years the city has unleashed a torrent of data about bus schedules, neighborhood crimes, 311 calls and other information. “Most of what is happening with public data now is interesting, but it’s people building apps to visualize the data,” said Catlett, a computer scientist at the university and Argonne National Laboratory. “We’re going to try to break down some of the really tough problems we’ve never been able to solve,” Besserud said.