Big Data Quotes of the Week: September 14, 2012

Jonah Peretti

“The math helps you have better understanding and helps you have more creative ideas, but you can’t replace the creative ideas”–Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed

“…the overwhelming majority of enterprise IT systems can’t quite make up their digital minds. Is big data there to feed the algorithms or inform the humans? Is big data being used to run a business process or create situational awareness for top management? Is big data there to provide a more innovative signal or a comfortable redundancy? ‘All of the above’ is exactly the wrong answer”—Michael Schrage

“The evidence is clear: Data-driven decisions tend to be better decisions. In sector after sector, companies that embrace this fact will pull away from their rivals. We can’t say that all the winners will be harnessing big data to transform decision making. But the data tell us that’s the surest bet”–Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

“I’ll go into a company and say, ‘What data problems can we solve?’ We get blank looks. [When he asks, instead, what things can help a company lose money and make money, usually two out of three are] problems that data can solve”—Anthony Goldbloom, Kaggle

“The most significant idea for big data is that it allows you to see around corners and react”—Michael Cavaretta, Ford

“What is big data?] Just imagine if your whole life you’ve been looking though one eye, and all of a sudden a scientist created a way for you to look out of both eyes. You not only see more, but your whole perspective changes. What if you could open a third eye … or thousands of eyes?”—Rick Smolan

“…the most important question regarding Big Data at almost any company is: How much are your customers really worth?”—Bill Lee

“Three significant digital technologies are converging in 2012 to redefine how you shop: social media, mobile, and big data. A holy trinity for marketers akin to the elusive unified field theory for physicists, the emergence of SoMoDat (as I like to call it) is forcing a wholesale reappraisal of business marketing strategies great and small”—Chris Horton