Where I go to, the talk is all of big data, and getting closer to the customer by (for example) knowing what they're doing online. Where I come from, I'm chased by pop-up ads from websites I visited days ago. I buy the second book in a series, and my Kindle suggests that I might like the first. Oh, and when I drop anything off at the dry-cleaner, I get an email later, asking how I'd rate the experience.
I don't mind. But if all this leveraging of "big" data about my activities and preferences really worked, I'd be living a much easier life. With "deep" data, which is perhaps unattainable by technology (spoiler for my conclusion?), the internet might know that I chose not to buy the thing I looked at on that website the other day; my Kindle might work out that I bought the second because I liked the first in paperback; my dry-cleaner - oh, don't get me started. I can join a "club" of people who drop off their dry cleaning there, and carry a card that identifies me as a member - no, don't get me started.
I question whether it counts as innovation to learn a new trick with existing technology and apply it without question. We may be reaching the limits of what can be achieved via a superficial analysis of "big" behavioural data, and perhaps we're getting to the point where the customer is tolerating low-level stupidity rather than admiring how perceptive we are.
To achieve "deep" big data, as distinct from shallow and perhaps counter-productively superficial big data, maybe the only answer is to include the human element? If you want to know what I really think of the "suggested posts" I'm offered on Facebook, for example, don't look at the three-option tick-box form I'm offered if I delete one - ask me.
But - yeah, right. How do you ask me?
Send for an innovator. We need something new here.
I don't mind. But if all this leveraging of "big" data about my activities and preferences really worked, I'd be living a much easier life. With "deep" data, which is perhaps unattainable by technology (spoiler for my conclusion?), the internet might know that I chose not to buy the thing I looked at on that website the other day; my Kindle might work out that I bought the second because I liked the first in paperback; my dry-cleaner - oh, don't get me started. I can join a "club" of people who drop off their dry cleaning there, and carry a card that identifies me as a member - no, don't get me started.
I question whether it counts as innovation to learn a new trick with existing technology and apply it without question. We may be reaching the limits of what can be achieved via a superficial analysis of "big" behavioural data, and perhaps we're getting to the point where the customer is tolerating low-level stupidity rather than admiring how perceptive we are.
To achieve "deep" big data, as distinct from shallow and perhaps counter-productively superficial big data, maybe the only answer is to include the human element? If you want to know what I really think of the "suggested posts" I'm offered on Facebook, for example, don't look at the three-option tick-box form I'm offered if I delete one - ask me.
But - yeah, right. How do you ask me?
Send for an innovator. We need something new here.
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