NILF 2014

The first decade of the commercial Internet was about distribution and the disintermediation of traditional businesses.  The second was about user-generated content: transforming the Web from pages into conversations, from a noun into a verb.  The third, just beginning, will be about data. Its exploding volume, technical accessibility, and the plummeting costs of storage and processing, will together be transformative. [It has always been true that larger data sets yield superior insight, but…] Big Data is the liberation of statistical insight from the constraints imposed by traditional data processing.  Really large data sets will permit pattern recognition, process coordination, consumer marketing, fraud control, and medical diagnosis, all in real time and focused on the individual consumer, event or transaction.  Getting insight from such data sets will require different data architectures, modes of inference, organizational structures, and skills. As Big Data “scales” so it will become a new source of competitive advantage, creating value beyond the traditional boundaries of the corporation.  It will thus become a logic for alliances, data utilities and new business models.