University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Big Data in Practice
Book

Big Data in Practice

How 45 Successful Companies Used Big Data Analytics to Deliver Extraordinary Results

Bernard Marr
Wiley, 2016
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Big data expert Bernard Marr provides a practical, valuable and nearly hype-free reference to the current state of big data, including predictive analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), now in use across many industries in various ways. He offers 45 case studies from more than a dozen industries to illustrate and describe how organizations generate, collect, analyze and act on the big data. Marr’s grammatical style and seemingly random organization of chapters take a toll, however, getAbstract recommends his study of each firm’s unique practices to business leaders across all industries. Seasoned data scientists may find the material basic, but anyone else interested in this field will gain a fresh understanding.

Summary

A Big Deal

Today enormous data generation combined with powerful analytics, algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) as well as cheap data storage, make this the era of big data. Big data may not last – at least, not as a business term. Given the inconceivable amounts of data that nearly every organization, across all industries, produces every day, the emphasis will move to “smart data.” Companies that use data selectively, analyze them wisely and apply them to improve their decision making, will gain a competitive advantage over those that don’t.

Big data affects almost every industry and every job. Almost everything you do at work and much of what you do at home – web surfing, social media activity, watching TV, playing online games, and sending emails and texts – now produces data that multiple organizations collect, analyze and act on for their profit. More industrial, office-based and household devices – an estimated “50 billion by 2020” – connect to the Internet, creating the pervasive Internet of Things (IoT). Every organization, regardless of size or industry, must embrace big data and analytics to compete and thrive. Now, every business...

About the Author

Bernard Marr consults, speaks and writes on big data and analytics.

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