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When Consultants Should and Shouldn’t Outsource Their Marketing

Video Transcript Hi. It’s Michael Zipursky from ConsultingSuccess.com. Welcome back to the Consulting Corner, where consultants learn how to consistently attract their ideal clients and significantly increase their fees. Today I’d like to share a few reasons why you should avoid outsourcing your marketing when you’re just getting your consulting business going. Far too often, […]

When Consultants Should and Shouldn’t Outsource Their Marketing is a post from: Consulting Success

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Big Data and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The potential of Big Data is slowly emerging on us, as analytical methods become increasingly more powerful in making the huge amounts of data we collect in todays society meaningful for understanding reality and to make predictions.

We have already covered the development in several blog posts, including Big Data is Better Data, The Challenge with Big Data and Christensen, Asimov and the Impact of Disruptive Innovation.

By now it seems Big Data, combined with the internet of things and the possibility we have to build complex connected system, like Ericsson´s networked society concept, together push us into a new disruptive age, a fourth industrial revolution.

It is not long ago we realised we have been through the third industrial revolution. In fact, I wrote a blog post about this just about two and a half years ago.

The first industrial revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to 1840. The second industrial revolution, starting around 1870, transformed western societies into an urban-centred, industrial-based culture, which was an entirely new social reality based on science and technology. The third industrial revolution, starting in the 1960s, brought us computers, electronics and the internet.

It can be argued that big data is a continuation on the third industrial revolution, however I start to think that what is happening now is something different. This new phase is truly breaking down the barriers between man and machine.

Data is increasingly building up on who we are, who we know, where we are, where we have been and where we plan to go. Mining and analysing this data lets us understand and predict how people behave at the individual, group and global level, as I wrote about in Christensen, Asimov and the Impact of Disruptive Innovation.

The difference between the age of Business Intelligence and the new age of Big Data is profound. 

When I was in business school in the 1980s, one of the initial year courses was statistical analysis, where we studied how small data and samples can be used to predict developments. Our course book was Chou “Statistical Analysis For Business and Economics”, and it was a very interesting read. I learned that through sampling, simulations and not the least Bayesian inference,  we had powerful tools for dynamic analysis of a sequence of data, with application in a wide range of activities, including science, engineering, philosophy, medicine, sport, and law. Through sampling and statistical analysis, we could develop Business Intelligence.

Common to all the analysis methods in the statistics course at Stockholm School of Economics, was that the data population is assumed to be larger than the observed data set. In other words, the observed data is assumed to be sampled from a larger population and conclusions about the observed data could through probability theory be assumed as valid for the full data population, given that we had at least 30 data points, which enabled an assumption of normal distribution.

In Comparison, Big Data is about data sets so large and complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate. For big data, we can make extremely accurate predictive analytics. The accuracy leads to more confident decision making and understanding of the world, and better decisions can mean greater operational efficiency, cost reduction and reduced risk.

This will have a profound influence on society, at a level that can help us bridge a number of current challenges like climate change, overpopulation and unemployment on a macro level, to advanced developments in life sciences, chemistry and advanced materials on a micro level.

As the impact looks to be so profound, I think the age of Big Data can well be seen as a new, fourth, industrial revolution, building upon the foundation of the third, just as the second industrial revolution built on the advancements of the first.

Some years ago, Gartner Group wrote  "Big Data represents the Information assets characterized by such a High Volume, Velocity and Variety to require specific Technology and Analytical Methods for its transformation into Value", and they defined Big Data in the following way:

• Volume: big data doesn’t sample. It just observes and tracks what happens
• Velocity: big data is often available in real-time
• Variety: big data draws from text, images, audio, video; plus it completes missing pieces through data fusion
• Machine Learning: big data often doesn’t ask why and simply detects patterns
• Digital footprint: big data is often a cost-free by-product of digital interaction

Whereas Business Intelligence uses descriptive statistics with data with high information density to measure things, detect trends etc.,  Big Data uses inductive statistics and concepts from nonlinear system identification to infer laws (regressions, nonlinear relationships, and causal effects) from large sets of data with low information density to reveal relationships, dependencies and perform predictions of outcomes, patterns and behaviours.

At its core, Big Data uses have unprecedented complexity, speed and global reach, and as digital communications become commonplace, data will rule in a world where nearly everyone and everything is connected in real time.

Big Data requires exceptional technologies to efficiently process large quantities of data in real-time or within tolerable elapsed times. Such technologies were created by the third industrial revolution and now enables the new networked society, transcending man and machine. The impact will be unprecedented in the history of human society.

The post Big Data and the Fourth Industrial Revolution appeared first on Bearing Consulting.

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Uber is uber

Uber the taxi-technology company started in 2009 as a novelty for its co-founders and friends. Now it has a market valuation of $51 billion, has 1M active drivers, and operates in 330 cities. Read a Fast Company article here which is focused on the … Continue reading →

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BCG – 50 Most Innovative Companies 2015

The Boston Consulting Group released its 10th annual listing of the world’s 50 Most Innovative Companies this morning. The list is based on a survey of 1,500 C-suite executives, who were asked to rank companies across industries and within their own industry. It also gives weight to total returns to shareholders over five years.

The top three on the list, Apple, Google and Tesla, come as no surprise. But it gets interesting after that. Samsung made a respectable number five.

Automakers other than Tesla earned three more spots in the top ten: Toyota (6), BMW (7) and Daimler (10.) The study´s co-author Andrew Taylor says the strong showing reflects how much autos have changed in the last decade, both in their power trains and as “delivery systems for other innovative technologies.”

Overall, three quarters of the companies in the top 50 were non-tech, including firms as diverse as Japan’s Fast Retailing (15), Disney (18)  and Marriott (19)  MAR -0.79%.

There are no Chinese companies in the top ten. Tencent is first at 12, and then there’s a big jump to Huawei (45) and Lenovo (50). Taylor said that is an increase from a decade ago, when there were no Chinese companies on the list, and he thinks their presence will grow. “The rate of innovation of Chinese companies is increasing, and the perception of their innovation is increasing,” he said, “but with a lag.”

The BCG survey found the importance of speed in business innovation is on the rise, with executives citing overly long development times as the biggest obstacle to innovation. It also noted the changing role of technology across industries. “Technology used to live in its own silo—the IT department,” the report says. “Today, digital, mobile, big data and other technologies are used to support and enable innovation across the organization, from new product development to manufacturing to go-to-market strategies, in multiple industries.”

Overall, innovation continues to rise in importance. In the survey 79% of respondents ranked innovation as either the top-most priority or a top-three priority at their company, the highest percentage since BCG began asking the question in 2005, when 66% said innovation was their top or among their three top priorities. At the same time, science and technology continue to be seen as increasingly important underpinnings of innovation, enabling four attributes that many executives identify as critical: an emphasis on speed, well-run (and very often lean) R&D processes, the use of technological platforms, and the systematic exploration of adjacent markets.

The post BCG – 50 Most Innovative Companies 2015 appeared first on Bearing Consulting.

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Global Growth in 2016 – Cities Carrying the Weight of Nations

Growth in global trade volumes has slowed in recent years, thanks to a slow economic recovery from the financial crisis, increased use of internet based services which is not tracked in statistics, and the changing structure of the Chinese economy. Maybe also new production techniques with cheaper local production in the advanced economies can be one reason. However there has been a number of new multilateral trade agreements since the Doha round of world  trade talks fell apart in 2008.

I recently participated in a seminar where we discussed the growth of regional trade, and according to the Economist, much of the focus in trade liberalisation has shifted to regional trade agreements (RTAs). The number of RTAs has risen from around 70 in 1990 to more than 270 in 2015.

In alignment with this, PWC today published a set of interesting blog articles and reports, where they conclude that news of de-globalization are premature. As PCW argues, economic integration at the regional level, within Asia, Europe and  Africa, continues to make progress.

Adam Smith wrote already in The Wealth of Nations on how the commerce of towns contributed to the improvement of the country. Today with the growth of urbanised areas and decline of countryside and small towns, this is more true than ever.

PCW also argue that skilled people are on the move across Asia Pacific in big numbers, from engineers to shipping channel pilots to nurses. In a report, prepared for business advisors to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), PwC takes a look at cross-border talented worker mobility. The report concludes with three principles for developing “supra talent” in Asia Pacific considering some ideas to improve conditions for international workers and businesses, as well as talent receiving and sending APEC economies. We recommend reviewing these blog articles and reports. It provides for a refreshing read.

The post Global Growth in 2016 – Cities Carrying the Weight of Nations appeared first on Bearing Consulting.

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270 blog posts later, how it turns out

Been blogging for 3 years and 6 months. Super enjoyed it. As I look back, over 270 blog posts, it’s interesting to see how things turned out. . . Candy Crush – Blogged about the addictive game and its profitable parent company … Continue reading →

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