Friday, June 8, 2012

Even Strategy should be Big in Big Data

Even Strategy should be Big in Big Data

Many business and technology professionals talk about "strategy"; they real do only tactics. Few, including veterans, do not yet digest the concept, and surely the implementation, of strategy.

This is not meant to be under estimating any industry veteran. Having built, grown and managed companies and business units of Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies, as well as the fastest growing companies in USA, I surely understand the industry pressure, and the pressures from investors and wall street. However, strategy for a corporation, big and small, is as important as breathing for a living being.

Strategy is not a "one word" concept, as many assume to be. Strategy has many facets. Strategic thinking needs you to have a closet full of thinking caps in your intellectual closet; the right one should be chosen from many in your closet, to best suit the occasion, to suit the corporation's size, type of industry, the portfolio of products and services, the country or geography, purpose at hand, the competitive environment, the economy and market.

To use another metaphor, strategy is just not a single stick you keep using to beat up in an occasion or situation; it is really like a large tree, with various branches, which you may think of as alternatives or options, based on the task at hand. Please also imagine this tree to adapt or morph as the industry and market driving factors change; imagine the tree to sprout new branches often.

Big Data is an impending phenomenon of unprecedented scale, growth and impact on the different beneficiaries: the technology, platform, tools and other products;  the hardware, software and systems companies; the various types of services companies; the new entrant companies; the entrepreneurial hot shots; the professionals, both the new kids on the block and "want to be" big data professionals; the consumers (C), businesses (B) and the governments (G).

Big Data demands Big Thinking; it demands different kind of thinking; it surely demands very fast thinking.

Most companies, big, small, start up and some even very large, and professionals know and feel that Big Data is a Big Opportunity, however, are not at all prepared to face the GIGANTIC Big Data wave that will surely overwhelm most of them. Get overwhelmed or get prepared to ride this gigantic wave.

Data will be an important currency in all aspects of our life and for the companies; the only difference this time around is that the data currency is measured in terra, peta, exa and zetta bytes and $ in millions and billions to digest this size of data explosion. The most important aspect of the business in the upcoming years and decades is how efficiently and economically you can convert the data currency to the $ currency.

The futurist in me says:

  • The data currency will have banks, trading, bartering and swaps.
  • The data currency will be local, regional, national and international, and in fact, tear the barriers, also "tunnel" though the barriers, of the current international money and gold currency walls.
  • Big Data owners, digesting technology and services companies, trainers, data traders and banks are all going to rule this now world of big data.
  • Whoever very quickly grabs the big data land (the big data land grabbers) will be kings and emperors of this new big data universe.
  • We all know what kings and emperors have done in history: They fight with each other, occupy others' territories and create bloodshed.
  • The kings and emperors fighting with each other, occupying each other and the blood shed is a metaphor for: "Big" Competition, Mergers and Acquisitions, Consolidations and Employee Lay-offs.
  • We as people, the universal citizens of the Big Data universe, generate data to contribute to the big data volumes, be targets and beneficiaries (the dichotomous roles) that the product and services companies "love", at the same time cry and scream about our privacy and security.
  • Talking about privacy and security, this is going to be a big business opportunity.
  • Even the state and national level elections, like the upcoming US presidential elections will be a hot bed of big data industry, with the presidential candidates carrying a mobile device to know what the people are thinking about them and accordingly give speeches and tweets with message bytes.
  • The media will use all this big data intelligence in their various broadcast and even exploiting the power of your mobile devices, which in turn modulate your "data creation behavior"; a new paradigm in "feedback loop" phenomenon of the big data.


I will be writing in detail about the astute practice of strategy and including the bag of tricks and techniques.

My purpose of this blog is to make all of realize that Big Data players need a paradigm shift in its strategy, to instill in your mind and also in your guts that the tactical thinking is sneaking into your heads, while you believe that you are thinking strategically.

Any of you may contact me for strategy. I am also a believer in tactics, that I have practiced in the past decades running companies.

KRS Murthy, bigdataexpert@gmail.com  or drkrsmurthy2012@gmail.com or (408)-464-3333

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for writing the blog and it has made me to visualise probable data demand.

    ReplyDelete