Innovation Alphabet
Big Data
In a nutshell
Any movement we make online generates a huge amount of information that will always be of interest to someone. The English term Big Data refers – literally – to the immense amount of data captured and managed every day by organizations and companies, stored and archived within specific systems. But, as is often the case, it is not so much the size that matters, but how it is used. That is, the ability to extract important insights from the data.
Application Fields
• Healthcare Industry: Within the health sector, the accumulation of Big Data enables research to improve increasingly personalized and effective drugs and treatments in response to existing diseases and conditions. The vast amount of data collected is analyzed through technologies aimed at extracting useful and coherent information from it. Data can bring innovation as much in the production and industrial component as in the research and development sector. But also in the purely clinical area of the healthcare field.
• Education: A load of information can paradoxically lighten the study load in education. Indeed, the collection of digital information can be leveraged to provide assistance in the evaluation of the performance of both teachers and students. As for the university world, research is currently being conducted to analyze through Big Data the dropout rates of students so as to understand the reasons for them. The aim is to reduce them, making university education meet the needs of young students.
• Tourism Industry: The tourism industry can benefit greatly from data analysis. Investing in in-depth knowledge of its customer base through the collection of information from loyalty programs certainly benefits the understanding of more frequent needs and issues expressed by travelers. As a consequence, it enables the development of more valued and tailored proposals and solutions.
Industries
• Big Data in the pharmaceutical industry
Chiesi, an Italian multinational pharmaceutical company based in Parma, is designing an architecture to manage information through Enterprise Intelligence. This business management approach applies new technologies and digital services paradigms within the company. The goal of the project is to improve customer engagement. Also, to integrate data across all collection channels through a comprehensive system that can manage the whole business activities.
• Big Data in the energy industry
Exploiting the combination of energy and Big Data, Eni has created a supercomputer capable of developing renewable energy. The object in question is a sealed floating hull composed of a pair of gyroscopic systems connected to as many generators. It converts sea wave energy into electricity through a mechanism activated by the oscillation produced by the sea. The computational capabilities offered by the supercomputer play an important role in aligning the operation of the gyroscopic system with local sea conditions. Indeed, we are talking about analyzing and cross-referencing large amounts of data from different sources. Those are meteorological data and information related to the actions of the machine. By integrating the adopted technologies with Big Data, it is possible to come up with response formulas suitable for each situation.
• Big Data in the service industry
Danske Bank has employed Big Data to improve fraud detection techniques. Investigations take place through machine learning algorithms integrated with analytics processes. Why? To probe tens of thousands of latent features and evaluate millions of online banking transactions in real time. The system returns information on real and fake fraudulent activity, enabling immediate response. Results: significant reduction in the cost of investigating false positives, 60% less fraud, $70 million operating profit. An increase in overall efficiency and considerable savings.
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Business Functions
• Big Data in support of marketing
Amazon uses digital information in support of marketing activities to build recommendation systems that suggest the purchase of certain products based on each customer’s demonstrated interests. Amazon’s use of information is truly impressive in how multifaceted it is. We are talking about advance shipping models that send products to the closest warehouse to the selected user before they have even been purchased. Or, again, the optimization of prices on the web based on several parameters such as user activity or order history.
• Big Data in support of HR
Unilever had to ask for Big Data support within the HR department to resolve the corporate crisis that was triggered in 2017. It followed the lack of agreement with multinational Kraft Heinz, which had launched a takeover bid for the British company. Unilever’s HR team used data to analyze networks within the organization. In this way, they could identify the most appropriate way to reduce costs. The system was able to monitor employees’ moods and attitudes, allowing the company to record their reactions to defensive strategies and, as a result, decide which plan was the most appropriate to implement. The use of this information enabled the company to overcome the crisis and avert the need to divest the company.
• Big Data in support of management
United Overseas Bank (UOB) Limited decided to use data to improve the operation of its Risk Management. Risk Management is the business process aimed at comprehensive and integrated control of risks through systematic activities that are usually time-consuming. However, by resorting to data analytics, UOB is now able to complete the same process in a matter of minutes thanks to a high-performance solution that combines grid computing, matrix calculations and database analysis.
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Check out more of the Innovation Alphabet:
Gamification
Gamification
Gamification is actually adding a game-like element to make more fun and engaging something that’s not necessarily a game. It’s all about turning a task that might be boring or difficult into a more enjoyable and motivating activity. You can also earn points, badges, and rewards for completing certain actions or challenges. Are you ready to play?
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Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence
A smart business means efficiency: Business Intelligence represents the ability to collect up-to-date data, present it in easy-to-understand formats, and deliver it in a timely manner to employees. Making data-driven decision-making and management processes leads to competitive advantage, reduces inefficiencies, and improves productivity and service at all levels.
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Artificial Scarcity
Artificial Scarcity
We often tend to desire what we cannot have. Or what we are in danger of losing: Artificial Scarcity is a strategy that flaunts a limited number of items that do not correspond to actual availability. The goal is to stimulate the perception in consumers that the stock of items is about to run out and thus create a need based on the “fear of being cut off” or the intention to buy the item in order to resell it at a higher price.
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Subscription Model
Subscription Model
A subscription model is a business tool that generates revenue by charging customers a fee at regular intervals. The company provides products or services to subscribers on a subscription basis, usually monthly or annually. In this way, loyalty has become more important than acquiring new users.
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Holacracy & Flat Organization
Holacracy & Flat Organization
A “flat organization” breaks down the traditional hierarchy and removes its negative connotation, while “holacracy” is the business tool that facilitates its formation. Flat organizations place more emphasis on communication and collaboration, aspiring to a distributed decision-making process that gives each employee a voice. But this is a model that is difficult to implement.
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Mass Customization
Mass Customization
Mass customization is an initiative adopted by companies to embrace the increasingly diversified needs of customers. By offering customizable products and services, consumers feel engaged and can bring their creativity into play. Brands gain from this a boost in perceived value and the opportunity to fuel a positive word-of-mouth marketing.
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Coopetition
Coopetition
If you can’t beat them, join them. Coopetition is a business strategy that defines cooperative and competitive relationships between competing companies in the same young or high-growth market. The goal is to travel a stretch of road together to lower initial research and development costs. Once the desired results are achieved, the companies will return to being enemies as before.
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MVP
MVP
To the disappointment of all sports fans, this is not an article about Michael Jordan. In the language of business, MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product and indicates the version of a new product that has enough features to attract customers. In this way, a team can gather the most feedback with the least effort, improve the prototype, and validate its sale.
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Agile
Agile
Agile is an approach to software development designed to respond to change. Teams quickly analyze the context in which they operate, identify uncertainties faced, and figure out how to adapt to always move forward. Interaction between individuals comes before processes and tools; collaboration with the customer is more important than negotiating contracts.
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Bounded Rationality
Bounded Rationality
The best solutions always come to mind when it is too late. This is because human beings tend to make decisions on the basis of satisfaction rather than optimization. Bounded Rationality means that we are unable to think clearly and linearly, we proceed by trial and error and forget all the possible variables that affect the process. But we are also flawed.
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