BIG DATA, KILLING MATHS AND CRAFTING NARRATIVE

Big Data is hot.

A recent O’Reilly Report stated it simply as “the future belongs to companies and people that turn data into products.” That’s good, that’s what QuantumBlack does!

In May McKinsey & Co got in on the act and published a weighty (it is McKinsey after all) tome on the subject in Big Data: the next frontier in innovation, competition and productivity. Its all pretty exciting stuff (certainly from our perspective), even if some of the forecasts seem hyperbolic there is undeniably a massive new market emerging, and one that will pervade every corner of our world. After all every business today is now an information business.

But.

We have a genuine worry that this rush to make use of information superabundance is missing some important elements. We shouldn’t forget that humans are involved, and when humans are involved it’s not always about the science and the perfectly rational answer.

For starters we don’t live in that world of perfect information; risk, quality and transparency are all challenges we humans throw up from time to time to make it a little harder for machines. We have to keep them on their toes after all. We’re covered of these ideas before with our concept of hard/soft data.

A second key element is the narrative. Why is this important, what does it mean, do I trust it, what if I change the way I look at it? All very human, and something we all do instantly when presented with information and intelligence. Our view is that visual design, information architecture and storytelling are going to be critical skills in tapping the power of analytics.

Bret Victor (www.worrydream.com is an ex-Apple designer, author of the fantastic paper on interface design MagicInk (a must read) with an obvious passion for experimentation. His latest project, Kill Math, is a fascinating concept; it’s not that he doesn’t believe in maths, he does – see how many of his design and engineering projects involve math. No, it’s the interaction and communication of maths, as Victor puts its “equations and squiggly symbols aren’t math at all: They’re merely our interface.” By making this interface complex, static and non-visual it makes it much harder for us to understand and communicate the underlying thinking and insight.

It’s in this combination of analytics and visual design that we believe the real edge will come from.

It seems the US Navy agrees, the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead describes how “the biggest breakthrough…is the successful integration of intelligence with operations, and using the network to get information to the right person, at the right time, in the right way. That is where the power is.”

He calls this Decision Superiority, and made it one of the top five goals in 2010 for the U.S. Navy use of information dominance as a weapon. We love the term decision superiority; it may get borrowed.

Strategy and decision making has changed, the next decade will see the rapid emergence of data driven products and services, decision-cycles shortening to almost real-time and next generation of leaders having grown up on Playstation. Our core business is deploying analytics to help make strategic decisions so we’re fully paid up members of that club.

What’s interesting for us though is that in spite their undeniable power data and analytics remain tools, ultimately humans will still make judgements and to do they must understand the narrative i.e. what is it, why is that important and what do I do about it?

Technology is now enabling us to acquire, process and manipulate vast amounts of information in real-time but art of good storytelling is still crucial to making the right call.