12 Books - Author Led Business Book Group discussion

This is our official discussion for our August 2013 book. You can register for the webinar here: http://www.12booksgroup.com/philsimon...

Let's get the discussion started. I am looking forward to reading this book.

I just read the intro and I have a comment to make about the book "Moneyball" that is mentioned in this book.

The book and the movie focuses on hitters but as we know that baseball is about pitching. Oakland A's were a good team because they had three top pitchers in Bolder, Zito and Hudson. You don't need sabermetrics if you have great pitchers on your team.

Looking for an active discussion with Phil Simon and the club members.

Phil,

Do you have any opinion on the article that was published in Wired in 2008 by Chris Anderson titled, "End of Theory."

http://www.wired.com/science/discover...

Do you think Big Data makes scientific method obsolete?

Also we commonly hear this phrase that "data is the new oil." Do you agree with this?

If so, then how do you explain the success of Warren Buffett who does not use a sophisticated analytics group at Berkshire Hathaway?

Jay wrote: "Let's get the discussion started. I am looking forward to reading this book.

I just read the intro and I have a comment to make about the book "Moneyball" that is mentioned in this book.

The b..."

Funny you bring this up. I was at a Diamondbacks game in Phoenix last night and (no doubt partly due to me starting this book) my head was spinning wondering about the big data of sports. The amount of data available is staggering and I couldn't help but wonder how it plays into the coaching and playing of the game.

Enjoying the book so far. Here's an interesting use of Big Data: http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/09/ne...

Check this video I posted that I had to do for a MOOC course I am currently taking titled, "Introduction to Public Speaking."

It is related to the topic for the month: Big Data.

I use the Target example that Phil Simon talks about later in the book.

It is about 9 minutes long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olOjtY...

Hey Jay

That Wired article gets quite a bit of play. I will say this. Big Data may in 100 years obviate the need for intuition and the scientific method. We're not there yet and I doubt that we will be anytime soon.

Carlie wrote: "Enjoying the book so far. Here's an interesting use of Big Data: http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/09/ne..."

Thanks, Carlie. I'm glad that it's resonating.

Hello All. I'll be honest and let you know that I was intimidated by the book. There's something about the words BIG DATA that just overwhelm me. I may be a dinosaur when it comes to all this. So, I'm a little behind as I haven't even began to read the book yet. One thing I've noticed is that so far all men have been making posts about "Too Big to Ignore." With that said, may I ask where are the women in this conversation? Is Big Data a man thing? Numbers don't move me the way that emotion does. I liked Phil's posting from August 7 at 5:38pm. I'm hoping by the time I read the book, I will have learned to think BIG.

Thanks, Denise. I would think that many people still consider Big Data to be an IT thing–and hence male-dominated.

Still, plenty of women know a thing or two about Big Data

http://www.philsimon.com/blog/big-dat...

Phil,

What are some of the financial metrics used to develop a business case for Big Data? Do you know how one calculates the NPV or IRR to figure out the value of information across time horizon? Has anyone developed any formula that one can use? How do you measure that you are getting better return from information than your competitors?

You mention in your book that Douglas Laney from Gartner has done some work in this areas but it is proprietary.

Thanks, Jay.

I specifically reject traditional ROI calculations in the book. I believe that we're dealing with a new world. What's the NPV of a new Big Data tool for Google? Unanswerable.

I couldn't use as much of Laney's work as I wanted but it's all copacetic with my publisher.

I was reflecting on the chapter that mentioned the upcoming and existing need for Big Data analytics people to fill jobs. Where do economists fit into this? Let me disclaim that I know very little about the profession but I have to imagine that they are tied directly to the Big Data movement.

I honestly don't mention that it in the book. I had to make some editorial choices, lest it balloon to 600 pages. :)

Phil,

According to Gartner, they predict that 85% of Big Data projects will fail t meet the business goals. I am not exactly sure of the figure 85%, but it is very high. What are the main reasons that you know why companies are likely to fail? People? Process? Technology?

Jacob wrote: "I was reflecting on the chapter that mentioned the upcoming and existing need for Big Data analytics people to fill jobs. Where do economists fit into this? Let me disclaim that I know very little..."

Jacob,

Are you asking from the point of using Big Data by economist to make forecasts or what they think will be the impact of Big Data on the economy?

There was a good debate on the latter at Ted this year between Robert Gordon, economist ans Professor at Northwestern, and Eric Brynjolfsson, Professor of Management at MIT. Another thought leader to check out is Andrew McAfee. Andrew and Eric published a book titled "The Race Against The Machine" that was profiled on 60 minutes early this year.

Jay wrote: "Jacob wrote: "I was reflecting on the chapter that mentioned the upcoming and existing need for Big Data analytics people to fill jobs. Where do economists fit into this? Let me disclaim that I kn..."

I was referring to the use of Big Data in the work of economics or if perhaps economists are well positioned to work with big data analytics. The book referenced statisticians but didn't talk about economists.

Jacob,

Check out the work done by these two economists from MIT: Albert Cavallo and Robert Rogobon.

Check out their work described in this article in New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financi...

Jay wrote: "Jacob,

Check out the work done by these two economists from MIT: Albert Cavallo and Robert Rogobon.

Check out their work described in this article in New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk..."

Very cool! That is what I'm talking about and I like it.

Jay wrote: "Phil,

According to Gartner, they predict that 85% of Big Data projects will fail t meet the business goals. I am not exactly sure of the figure 85%, but it is very high. What are the main reason..."

I don't consider Big Data to be an IT project, as I write in the book. Why New Systems Fail - my first book - is on IT projects, so I know a thing or two about the subject. Big Data is a state of mind, not an initiative.

If you haven't checked out the color version of the infographic on page 11 at www.domo.com, I recommend that you do. In addition, there are several other infographics there that deal directly or indirectly with Big Data that are interesting.

I also found Mashable's A Day in the Life of the Internet interesting. I imagine that there has been some change in the year plus that this was first posted.

All,

There is an interesting article on Big Data in August 17th NYT by James Glanz. The author is saying that Big Data has not helped the economy. Proponents say that it is hard to quantify. It is just helping companies know more on how to market better but it is does not show up in growing the GDP.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/sun...

Big Data could go the way of AI and Object Oriented Development.

AI was always hyped so I got my Masters in that field and I never was able to get a job since no company was doing anything commercial, so I switched to Object Oriented Development. I even got a job at a company called Object Design that was the leader in the Object Oriented Database. No luck, the company never lived up to its promise. I even parlayed that experience to get a job at Oracle since they had included some OO function in their database V8.0, but no one bought it for that functionality. This was around the mid to late 90s.

Today both AI and OO have been subsumed into other technologies. I have a feeling that Big Data may go the same route.

It's entirely possible. I'm not in love with the moniker.

Phil,

Do you think we will become too dependent on Big Data to the point that it could result in major disasters?

Do you think Big Data had any role in the financial meltdown of 2008?

Also this is not specific to Big Data but speaks to how over reliance on data can mislead one and even a country. I am speaking of Robert McNammara's fixation on body count during the Vietnam War. This was what he was looking for and got the count from the field. As we all know from history this information was meaningless since it did not indicate how well the war was going and who was being killed. McNammara was a Whiz Kid whose claim to fame was data to improve the logistics during WWII that saved money and increased efficiency.

Melvin Kranzberg said,"Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral."

It certainly applies here.

I'd argue that the lack of relying upon information clearly visible in part caused the meltdown, but that's a chat over beers sometime.

Jay wrote: "Big Data could go the way of AI and Object Oriented Development.

AI was always hyped so I got my Masters in that field and I never was able to get a job since no company was doing anything commerc..."

Jay - here is a related article:

http://allthingsd.com/20130819/think-...#!

Casey,

Good article.

I think Gartner predicted a year ago that 85% of Big Data projects will fail to meet the business objectives. This is not easy stuff. Most companies can't even manage their small data and now they are all of a sudden going to be successful with Big Data.

Companies will struggle with Big Data since you can't operate with a silo'd mindset. It always comes down to people (50%), process (30%) and technology (20%).

The focus is still mostly on technology and that is why lot of projects will fail.

Phil, any thoughts?

We can have a very long discussion about Moneyball!

Phil,

You talk about technology in the "Big Data Solutions" chapter.

If a small company wants to get started what is the minimum of technology they would require? Should they start with Cloud offering like Amazon's AWS? This would address the infrastructure part.

What about the data store? Hadoop? MapReduce? What about analytics? Cloudera perhaps? This can get complicated very quickly.

Jacob,

Someone did do some analysis on Miley Cyrus's VMA performance.

http://benn.svbtle.com/?utm_source=bu...

Jay wrote: "Jacob,

Someone did do some analysis on Miley Cyrus's VMA performance.

http://benn.svbtle.com/?utm_source=bu..."

HAH! That is great. Interesting data too.

Here is my review of the book.

http://www.5toolgroup.com/1/post/2013...