Wharton Professor Pokes Hole in Big Data Balloon by Robert Gelber.
Just a reminder that useful results may matter more than what terminology you use. Maybe.
Just as we enter the upswing on the hype cycle for big data, the academics are stepping in and making it clear that in this case, there might be much ado about nothing.
According to Dr. Peter Fader, co-director of the Wharton School of Business and marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, there are some glaring problems with the way vendors and enterprise execs are framing the conversation around big data.
He doesn’t consider himself a data Luddite, and understands that captured information can generate more value. The argument is that too much information is being captured in order to answer questions that don’t require it.
In an interview this week, Dr. Fader poked holes into the big data practices, collecting masses of data to enable granular customer analysis. He says that while the concept itself has high potential (after all, it’s just data), it reminds him of another bubble that infiltrated enterprise IT no so long ago–customer relationship management (CRM). Like big data, he says, the CRM concept focused on collecting and analyzing transactional information, but failed to achieve its given goal.