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Outside Insight: Navigating a World Drowning in External Data

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The world today is drowning in data. There is a treasure trove of valuable and underutilized insights that can be gleaned from information companies and people leave behind on the internet - our 'digital breadcrumbs' - from job postings, to online news, social media, online ad spend and more. As a result, we're at the cusp of a major shift in the way businesses are managed and governed - moving from a focus solely on lagging, internal data, toward analyses that also encompass industry-wide, external data to paint a more complete picture of a brand's opportunities and threats and uncover forward-looking insights, in real time. Tomorrow's most successful brands are already embracing Outside Insight, benefitting from an information advantage while their competition is left behind. Drawing on practical examples of transformative, data-led decisions made by brands like Apple, Facebook, Barack Obama and many more, in Outside Insight , Meltwater CEO Jorn Lyseggen illustrates the future of corporate decision-making and offers a detailed plan for business leaders to implement Outside Insight thinking into their company mindset and processes.

320 pages, Paperback

Published September 30, 2017

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Jorn Lyseggen

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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
Profile Image for Amos Yeo.
6 reviews1 follower
January 16, 2018
The idea is valid and premise is interesting but ended up being thinnly veiled sales material for the meltwater service, ultimately making you doubt the content a little more than being a promotional piece.
Profile Image for Minh Nguyen.
103 reviews2 followers
December 27, 2021
“Mining internal data is looking at the Past. Mining external data is looking at the Future”
This book has some insightful stories about how companies use external data to drive their businesses growth. The author called it “Outside Insight (OI)”, a new decision making paradigm for mastering a new digital reality.

I was quite satisfied with the content of the book. I usually say to my team members that we should leverage both 1st party data (internal data) and 3rd party data (external data). By analyzing internal data, it can give us some early insights about our users. However, to get a deeper understanding on why they love our products, we need 3rd party data as well. From research methodology perspectives, I always suggest a good combination of qualitative and quantitative, traditional methods and neuroscience tools. With a holistic approach from both data (internal + external) and methodology (qualitative + quantitative, traditional + frontier), we can get deep insights into users behavior to drive product growth.
5 reviews
February 21, 2019
It was a good read.

It reflects on how important external data is, and increasingly becoming a major factor in decision making at all levels in an organization.

With the increasing usage of social media and all other online channels, people, as well as organizations, leave breadcrumbs of their life online. Neglecting this data, and focusing on only internal data would easily cause you to make the wrong decisions, and make you more reactive as an organization, instead of proactive.

Even though there are some challenges with external data such as privacy concerns, ethical issues, it still looks to be the direction we are heading towards, and it would soon be an integral part of every organization's structure in decision making, like how internal data has become.
Profile Image for Kalle Wescott.
838 reviews16 followers
October 13, 2022
I read /Outside Insight: Navigating a World Drowning in Data/, by Jorn Lyseggen:

https://outsideinsight.com/outside-in...

Jorn Lyseggen, founder of Meltwater, illustrates how you can get useful information from data. What struck me years ago was using satellite data and pictures to predict earnings and therefore public equity appreciation (from auto-counting customer cars in parking lots).

He calls such digital data "breadcrumbs." One poignant and cogent example: we can create maps of where all cats are because of cat owners posting tens of millions of pictures online, almost all of which have coordinate information in them.

Interesting book that provoked a few thoughts.
Profile Image for Harold M..
103 reviews3 followers
December 15, 2019
The good: this book was really helpful in understanding how external data appends could enhance our ability to service constituents, and understand business standing in the industry. The case studies were interesting and the tone was mostly accessible.

The challenge: the author doesn't have a ton of distance from the outside insight model so he's selling it as much as he's explaining it. And the concerns in the second to last chapter (privacy, fake news, algorithmic oversteps) could've gotten more attention. I also worry that data sometimes becomes destiny and this is a book that moves in that way.
119 reviews
January 9, 2020
Keep your head up as you weed through your internal data. How do you make sure you are successful, not only according to your own KPIs, but within the market as a whole? You have to use external data to understand the market as it is, and where it’s going. Used the classic Kodak story as a case in point.

Not a bad read, but felt a little obvious. Though perhaps my interest in market and consumer behaviors makes it a little more common-sense than it would be to most.

Good framework on how to apply the lessons step-by-step.
Profile Image for Cath.
27 reviews7 followers
May 21, 2020
Sekarang bisnis itu harus bisa adaptif. Manajemen yang baik adalah yang bisa memberikan respon yang baik pada perubahan.

Buku ini memberikan solusi kepada badan organisasi untuk merespon perubahan di masa realitas digital (marak social media, search engine dsb)

Dengan solusi outside insight, suatu badan organisasi bisa memprediksi keputusan di masa depan, tau posisi nya dengan kompetitor dan memberikan respon secara real time.
Profile Image for Mickaël A.
152 reviews8 followers
February 14, 2021
The simple idea is too look as much (if not more) to external data rather than internal data. Internal data tells you about the past and external data tells you about the future of a business.

That being exposed, the book is not really mind-blowing and ideas are stalling. The interest then resides in examples, numerous and detailed enough to be remembered. For example I was quite suprised to see one can guess supermarket profits based on analyzing parking lot satellite images :)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Werther Veulemans.
9 reviews3 followers
June 30, 2020
An interesting read. Though it won’t be a life changing book. It’s a typical book for a leader to write to not only promote his company’s services and to add as an accolade to his “winnings”. Still interesting to read during this decade, though I believe it will be an irrelevant book by the end of this decade.
Still enjoyed reading it next to the pool.
Thank you and love life.
Profile Image for Lidija.
58 reviews1 follower
January 31, 2019
Discovered this one on a list of top books CMOs must read. A fascinating and essential look into next gen data analysis for companies.
Profile Image for Fan.
4 reviews
December 15, 2017
indeed a very exciting area, which is often ignored.
the very last two chapters are summary of the whole book, which is short, right to the point and well-written.

the first part of book is full of different examples, concept itself is exciting, but it feel a bit unnecessary and prolix.

3 reviews
June 26, 2018
Outside insight offers you the chance to look at the business from the outside perspective (I mean the data) and guide you to turn the data into insight. Very insightful.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews

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