Page 133 - Fundamentals of Management Myths Debunked (2017)_Flat

132 Part 2 • Planning
• It’s not just businesses that are exploiting big data. A team of San Francisco researchers was
big data
The vast amount of quantifiable information that able to predict the magnitude of a disease outbreak halfway around the world by analyzing
can be analyzed by highly sophisticated data phone patterns from mobile phone usage. 54
processing
Yes, there’s a ton of information out there—100 petabytes here in the decade of the
2010s, according to experts. (In bytes, that translates to 1 plus 17 zeroes, in case you were
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wondering!) And businesses—and other organizations—are finally figuring out how to use
it. So what is big data? It’s the vast amount of quantifiable information that can be analyzed
by highly sophisticated data processing. One IT expert described big data with “3V’s: high
volume, high velocity, and/or high variety information assets.” 56
What does big data have to do with decision making? A lot, as you can imagine. With this
type of data at hand, decision makers have very powerful tools to help them make decisions.
However, experts caution that collecting and analyzing data for data’s sake is wasted effort.
Goals are needed when collecting and using this type of information. As one individual said,
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“Big data is a descendant of Taylor’s ‘scientific management’ of more than a century ago.”
While Taylor used a stopwatch to time and monitor a worker’s every movement, big data is
using math modeling, predictive algorithms, and artificial intelligence software to measure
and monitor people and machines like never before. (See Case Applications #2 and #3 on
pp. 137 and 138.) But managers need to really examine and evaluate how big data might
contribute to their decision making before jumping in with both feet.

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