We are at the beginning of the Big Data era, and there is widespread anticipation that this will be a huge benefit to companies. I’ve been attending the World Economic Forum in Davos and in my `Data to Decisions’ panel we heard CEOs tell how Big Data can reinvent everything from CRM to internal processes to product design.
We also heard that there are significant challenges in data sourcing, permission agreements, data quality and of course privacy concerns, as most Big Data is personal data about customers. Fortunately these challenges can be addressed by conventional business practices.
Buying an automobile is probably the second largest purchase you’ll make after your home. Not only will you spend tens of thousands of dollars on it, but if you are like most people, you’ll live with it for a long time. Given what a major decision it is, one of the biggest factors when deciding which car to purchase is trust. If you don’t trust a particular company, you certainly aren’t going to invest the time and energy to evaluate its vehicles.
The numbers are staggering: The average family debt in Canada has increased 78 percent over the last two decades, recently hitting $100,000 per family. In the third quarter of 2010, Canadians’ debt-to-disposable income ratio surpassed the US for the first time since the late 1990s. In my home country – I grew up just outside of Ottawa, Ontario – this is getting a lot of publicity (comparing ourselves to our American cousins is always a popular pastime).![[MIT logo]](http://mitsloanexperts.mit.edu/wp-content/themes/twentyeleven/img/logo_mit.gif){kind=logo}
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