Too Big to Ignore: The Business Case for Big Data

Residents in Boston, Massachusetts automatically report potholes and road hazards via their smartphones. Progressive Insurance tracks real–time customer driving patterns and uses that information to offer personalized rates. Google accurately predicts local flu outbreaks based upon thousands of user search queries. Amazon provides remarkably insightful, relevant, and timely product recommendations to its 300 million customers. Quantcast lets companies target precise audiences and key demographics over the Web. NASA runs contests via gamification site TopCoder, awarding prizes to those with the most innovative and cost–effective solutions to its problems. Explorys offers penetrating and previously unknown insights into healthcare behavior.

How do these organizations and municipalities do it? In short, via an unassailably important trend: Big Data, the massive amounts, new types, and multifaceted sources of information streaming at us faster than ever.

In Too Big to Ignore, tech expert and award–winning author Phil Simon provides commonsense, jargon–free advice for people and organizations looking to understand and act on Big Data. Rife with case studies, examples, analysis, and quotes from real–world practitioners, you′ll learn why Big Data is a big deal.

Phil Simon is a frequent keynote speaker, a recognized technology authority, and the award–winning author of seven management books. His contributions have been featured in The Harvard Business Review, Wired, BusinessWeek, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times, and on CNN, NBC, and CNBC.