The application of big data technology to business has had revolutionary impacts on management, operation and decision-making. Collecting and analyzing data enables companies to run in a considerably more efficient and controllable way. While big data drives business development, it also brings a new problem that has disturbed many corporations – data management.

     Flooded data center

Allied Building Products Corporation is one of the many companies that suffered a big loss from a failure to manage its data. In October, 2012, two of its data centers were destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. And the companies spent nearly 40 hours getting the systems and data back up and running. According to Scott Fischer, information technology director for Allied, it was the failure to build up enough backup data centers that resulted in this disaster.

Allied Building product Corp.’s lesson reminds me that successfully applying big data technology into business is far more difficult than I thought. There are many important factors a manager should consider when collecting and analyzing data. For example, what kind of data should be collected? It is no longer true to say that the more the better when collecting data because more data means more work to do and more cost for storage. In addition, a manager should also think about how to analyze the data. This is because for different purposes, they should use different methods, which may lead to distinguished results.

Sources:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/leadership-lab/are-you-letting-data-drive-your-decisions/article20836228/

http://www.cioinsight.com/it-news-trends/allied-building-products-rethinks-dr-strategy.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-managing/leadership/taming-the-data-monster-is-a-growing-challenge/article14964625/

Since 1945, the United Nations has devoted tens of millions of donations to mitigating global problems like poverty, homelessness and famine. In the short term, those financial supports have indeed alleviated some urgent problems; however, in the long term, the problems still exist because the essence of the problems does not change. Donations, no matter how much, could only have limited impacts on the issues and might even deteriorate the current situation if the recipients do not know how to utilize them in an efficient way.

Arc Initiative and social entrepreneurs provide us with a new and more effective way to solve the global problems. Arc Initiative shares essential business toolkits and experience with people who want to start their own business but do not have enough knowledge about entrepreneurship. On the other hand, social entrepreneurs create shared value to help the local community attain sustainable development. For example, Grameen Bank, run by Muhammad Yunus, provides micro-loan to poor people who do not have enough credits to borrow money from big banks to start their business. With this assistant, those entrepreneurs find a way to get rid of poverty. In turn, the development of those small businesses increases employment opportunities in the local community, which propels the local economy to grow in the long-run.

The key point of the two methodologies is to help people how to help themselves. So when we want to help people to achieve sustainable development in the future, this should be a key thing that we need to consider.

source:

http://skollworldforum.org/about/what-is-social-entrepreneurship/

http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/Global_Reach/ARC_Initiative/About_ARC

Blog Link:  https://blogs.ubc.ca/amywu/2014/11/10/thepowerofhashtagsinbusiness/

I found Amy Wu’s blog post on the companies’ uses of hashtags on Twitter for marketing purpose very interesting. I totally agree with her that a company can enhance engagement with consumers and increase its brand recognition by using hashtag in an appropriate way. As opportunities and risks always go together, it intrigued me to explore cases where this “social-media-strategy” fails. I did some research and here are a couple of examples:

• Last year, Tesco, UK’s leading supermarket, failed to update its auto-tweets when it was involved in the horse meat scandal. The pre-scheduled tweet read: “It’s sleepy time so we’re off to hit the hay. See you at 8am for more #TescoTweets.” This generated thousands of complaints since people thought Tesco was trying to dodge the topic.
• In September this year, DiGiorno Pizza abused the “#WhyIStay” hashtag, which was originally used for 9-11 anniversary conversation, as an advertisement. And the tweet read: “#WhyIStayed  I have pizza.” This aroused public anger and complaints.

Social media like Twitter provides companies with a convenient interaction platform where they can engage with customers and convey their values more effectively. However, this closer engagement also makes the meltdown more catastrophic when things go wrong. Therefore, although the development of social media brings new opportunities in business, companies should be extremely careful when using it to avoid unnecessary social media disasters.

Source:

http://marketingland.com/john-oliver-corporations-dont-belong-twitter-conversations-99950

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-top-10-corporate-social-media-disasters-2013-11

picture from The Economist

Recently, I watched a TED speech “The Future of Business Is the Mesh”, given by Lisa Gansky. In the video, Gansky predicts that mesh economy (also called “sharing economy”) will play a more important role in the future business. By giving examples about car-sharing companies, she explains that because of the advances in information technology, people are able to create new platforms which make access to get goods and services more convenient and less costly in many cases than owing them. Thus, mesh economy can benefit the society as a whole.

One of the key words in sharing economy is “collaborative consumption”, a peer-to-peer business model where people can rent their assets (like houses, cars) to others when they are not using them. I was inspired by this brilliant idea. I think this is a good exercise of creating shared value since it allows companies to earn profits by reducing unused value of resources, which benefits individuals, business and the community. 

The concept “collaborative consumption” inspires me to think about “collaborative service”. The “collaborative service” I am thinking about is that different companies in an industry or even cross industries collaborate to build facilities that are high-cost but will benefit the whole industry. For example, in electronic-car industry, power stations play an essential role in popularizing electronic vehicles. However, building up appropriate number of stations across the country is very costly for single company. Then, companies in this industry like Tesla, BMW could cooperate to split the cost so that they could invest the money that saved from collaboration to improve their points of difference. Meanwhile, the standardized power station enables consumers charge their cars more conveniently. I agree with Gansky that sharing economy will be a new trend and probably a core value in many industries in the future because it creates shared value satisfying both companies and societies.

Sources:

Video Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_gansky_the_future_of_business_is_the_mesh?language=en#t-869193

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21573104-internet-everything-hire-rise-sharing-economy