Phil Simon's Blog, page 86

Google, Big Data, and The Innovator’s Dilemma

Over the last few weeks, I’ve read plenty of articles that refer to Big Data as projects. Here’s one.

This notion of Big Data as an IT project is a real bone of contention for me. It represents in my view one of the most pernicious myths out there on the topic. Big Data is fundamentally different than implementing ERP and CRM systems. Beyond that, I don’t understand why were so eager to classify Big Data as projects anyway. As I wrote in my first book, IT projects don’t exactly have stunning success rates, and that’s with tried-and-true methodologies and mature systems.

Are We Finished Yet? Not Google

You won’t find this project mentality at Big Data behemoths like Google. Case in point: the company just retooled its search engine–again. As CBS News reported:

The overhaul came as part of an update called “Hummingbird” that Google Inc. has gradually rolled out in the past month without disclosing the modifications.

The changes could have a major impact on traffic to websites. Hummingbird represents the most dramatic alteration to its search engine since it revised the way it indexes websites three years ago as part of a redesign called “Caffeine,” according to Amit Singhal, a company vice president. He estimates that the redesign affects about 90 percent of the search requests Google gets.

The obvious question is, Why? Why do this when you still control more than two-thirds of the US search market? After all, in many old-school companies, even half of that market share would lead to a culture of complacency. You’d hear many arguments like, “It ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Keep refining algorithms. Keep using data

Two main reasons come to mind. First, Larry and Sergey understand all too well The Innovator’s Dilemma (affiliate link), the classic business text by Clayton Christensen. Companies like RIM/BlackBerry, Kodak, and Microsoft are among the scores that have stagnated or fallen from grace because they failed to embrace new ways of doing things. In each case, the world changed–and not just in a minor way. Tectonic changes were taking place. Each organization minimized the long-term impact of new threats and technologies. Self-preservation trumped innovation. Second, and more germane to this post, Google understands the dynamic nature of data. The sources of data change, as do their uses. Couple that an improved understanding about how the Web works, and you get Hummingbird.

Simon Says: Big Data Is Never Finished

Any “project” that results in a 67 percent share of the US search market must be considered successful, but that term implies definitive start and stop dates. Google doesn’t make this mistake. I’d bet a great deal of money that Hummingbird will not represent the last incarnation of Google’s search engine. Nor should it.

Now, I have no inside knowledge of the ins and outs behind Hummingbird, and odds are that you don’t either. In a way, though, those particulars are irrelevant. The larger lesson is that most companies ought be acting like Google does. Keep evolving. Keep refining algorithms. Keep using data. Learn from one of the most formidable companies on the planet. Data evolves. So should any products or services that hinge upon it.

In other words, stasis is the enemy of progress.

Feedback

What say you? This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

The post Google, Big Data, and The Innovator’s Dilemma appeared first on Phil Simon:.

The Visual Organization Book Tour: San Fran

When I write a book, I usually hire a PR firm to help with its promotion. This time, I’m going to try something different.

For the The Visual Organization, I would like to do a limited number of free talks in and around San Francisco over the course of a week in either late late March or early April of 2014. I’d like to give at least two talks per day of around 30-45 minutes each on Big Data and data visualization. I’ll then take 15-30 minutes of questions. Ideally, I would speak at venues that can accommodate a decent crowd and allow for the talk to be recorded. I am open to speaking at the following places:

Organizations
Conferences
Colleges and universities, but probably not grade schools
Co-working spaces
Large MeetUp groups
Libraries
Candlestick Park (ok, that might be a stretch)
Others if they make sense

Requirements

I normally charge when I speak, but I will waive my fee in exchange for the purchase of fair number of books (at least 20) at a discounted price from Wiley. This will likely be $25/copy + shipping. (I don’t control the price and, in case you’re wondering, The Visual Organization will a full-color hardcover book containing roughly 300 pages.)

After the talk, I will gladly answer industry-specific questions, but each talk will be based upon the book. That is, I won’t be developing a specific presentation for each talk.

My talks are never exactly the same. I always improvise, much like Neil Peart’s drum solos. At each, though, I”ll talking about the increasing importance of dataviz in an era of Big Data. I’ll discuss some of the examples in the book: Netflix, eBay, Autodesk, University of Texas, and Wedgies. I’ll be talking about the need for new types of dataviz tools and applications. I won’t be lecturing about very technical things like programming in R.

Next Steps

If you’re interested in having me speak to your organization or group or have any suggestions, then please connect here.

The post The Visual Organization Book Tour: San Fran appeared first on Phil Simon:.

The Visual Journalist

In my new book, I argue that the Visual Organization has arrived. More than ever, employees are visualizing data to help them understand what’s happening–and to make better business decisions.

We’ve also seen over the past five years the arrivals of the visual citizen, the visual consumer, and even the visual journalist. With regard to the latter, The Wall Street Journal is hiring reporters with a bent for telling visual stories. (For more on this, see my post Data Journalism.)

The trend towards increasing dataviz in media is unmistakable. I certainly don’t remember infographics ten years ago. Articles and blog posts without images seem dated.

Simon Says

Maybe journalism isn’t dead after all? Maybe it’s just shifting. Look at some of the high-profile tech journalist departures lately. Techies like Nate Silver, David Pogue, Kara Swisher, Walt Mossberg, and others are hardly hurting. On the contrary, they are parlaying their brands into buku bucks. Reporting on technology and data seem to be areas of growth, not decline.

Proficiency with data and dataviz will become even more essential in the upcoming days. Being able to “speak” data will become requirements in all sorts of jobs.

Feedback

What say you?

The post The Visual Journalist appeared first on Phil Simon:.

Crowdsourcing Design: An Interview with DesignCrowd Founder Alec Lynch

Article originally appeared on Huffington Post. Click here to read it there.

I’ve written extensively on this site and in my books about crowdsourcing. These days, you can use the wisdom of crowds to do just about anything–including design. To this end, I recently sat down with DesignCrowd founder Alec Lynch. We talked about crowdsourcing, the problem it tries to solve, and the history of the company.

PS: What’s your definition of crowdsourcing?

AL: Crowdsourcing is a type of outsourcing that involves using many people often from around the world (‘the crowd’) to get something done. You can think of crowdsourcing like cloud computing but with people instead of computers. When done well and applied to the right task, crowdsourcing is basically outsourcing on steroids–it is faster, better, and often cheaper.

Crowdsourcing is particularly powerful for creative tasks or projects (such as design, video or photography) and this is one of the most common applications. Crowdsourcing is also used for non-creative tasks. Examples include research, basic writing, quality control, particularly when a high volume of tasks is required.

In saying that, since the term crowdsourcing was coined in 2006 by Jeff Howe, its definition has evolved to become quite broad and is often used to describe anything that involves a crowd. Today, everyone seems to be crowdsourcing and you can crowdsource just about anything–Obama is crowdsourcing, Google is crowdsourcing, NASA crowdsourced poetry for Mars, and (apparently) Marissa Mayer crowdsourced her baby’s name.

PS: I used the site to design a logo for my publishing company and was very pleased with the results and the service. For others, explain how DesignCrowd works. What problems are you trying to solve?

AL: We started the company in 2007 with the goal of helping people crowdsource logo, web, and graphic design ideas from designers around the world. Businesses post a brief on DesignCrowd requesting a design and we then publish the brief on the site and invite our 100,000 designers (and ‘the world’) to respond. Over the course of five to ten days a typical logo project receives over 100 designs.

Crowdsourcing is still relatively new and the opportunity for it to disrupt multiple billion dollar industries is huge.

I started DesignCrowd because I could see a number of problems and opportunities within the traditional design industry.

These problems fell into two buckets. First, for businesses buying design, I could see they faced three key problems: it was expensive, it was slow, and it was risky when buying design (there was no certainty they would get a good result). Second, for designers, I could see it was difficult to find work or get a job—even if you were qualified or talented.

In summary, I could see the global design industry was large–at least $44B–and ripe for disruption. DesignCrowd fixes the problems for businesses buying design and aims to discover and provide opportunity the best designers in the world using crowdsourcing.

PS: How did you start DesignCrowd? How have you grown the company?

AL: DesignCrowd started ‘out of the garage’ in Sydney Australia. My co-founder Adam Arbolino built a prototype while we were both working full-time. I then quit my job as a strategy consultant at Booz & Co, took the prototype, $10,000 in savings, and 3 credit cards, moved back home to live with my mom, and started working on the business full time in 2007.

Since then, the business has had three phases of growth. The first phase was bootstrapped. For the first two years I worked from home–funding the business with credit cards and eventually $30,000 of loans from friends and family. In 2009, we received $300,000 in angel investment and we used that money to get our first office and start marketing the business more outside Australia. In 2011, we received a $3M investment from Starfish Ventures–Australia’s largest VC.

PS: What tips would you give people looking to crowdsource?

AL: If you’re looking to crowdsource a creative project (whether that be logo design or photography or video), my advice is: 1) write a strong brief 2) offer a fair amount of money (the more you offer, the better your result) 3) provide a lot of feedback to the crowd; and 4) use a crowdsourcing marketplace with a large community of sellers and creatives.

PS: What does the future hold for crowdsourcing?

AL: Crowdsourcing is still relatively new and the opportunity for it to disrupt multiple billion dollar industries is huge.

Crowdsourcing is being powered by a number of huge macro trends enabled by the Internet. Firstly, the Internet is providing access to millions of talented workers in emerging economies. For example, many crowdsourcing sites are powered by users from Asia. While there are 1 billion Internet users in Asia, this is only 25% of the population in the region and as the rest of the population in Asia (3 billion people) connects to the Internet, crowdsourcing will become an even more powerful tool. In addition to this, crowdsourcing also taps in to a powerful freelancing, work-from-home and small business trends in the North America, Australia, the UK, and Europe.

Within creative industries, the opportunity for crowdsourcing is particularly big. For example, the global design industry is at least $44B but crowdsourcing (while disruptive and gaining tremendous traction) still has around 0.1% market share. The opportunity to grow and take share from traditional players remains huge. In saying that, crowdsourcing won’t kill traditional design agencies. As the crowdsourcing model and design industry evolves, we will see more and more traditional agencies working with and adopting crowdsourcing as part of their business model–combining the power of crowdsourcing with the strengths of the traditional business models. Either way, the future for crowdsourcing is bright and it will continue to grow, evolve and, ultimately, change the way the world works.

The post Crowdsourcing Design: An Interview with DesignCrowd Founder Alec Lynch appeared first on Phil Simon:.

Pasting Heaven

Back in the day, Microsoft Word presented a clipboard that let users copy and paste multiple items. I miss that feature. Fortunately, you can get it back via Jumpcut, a free Mac app equivalent.

Jumpcut lets users see everything they’ve copied that day. It allows you to page through the copied items until you’ve found the item you’d like to paste. It’s a writer’s dream.

For a more detailed explanation of how the app works, click here.

For more of these tips, check out the New Small App for iOS.

The post Pasting Heaven appeared first on Phil Simon:.

When a Client Isn’t Worth Keeping

Smart small businesses know the meaning of an extremely important concept: bad business. In this post, I want to remind you that you shouldn’t take all comers. Nor should you treat all of your current customers equally.

Karma and the Golden Rule

As a small business owner, I realize that I can’t do everything myself. I have no Superman Complex. So in order to be successful, I need to find people who routinely provide outstanding service. When in the market for a new vendor, I often think about the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated.

Because I’ll pay for quality, I set the bar high for my vendors. I’m fortunate enough to have some great people working with me. (My primary web guy, Todd Hamilton, is one of the people on whom I primarily rely.) In turn, I routinely recommend them to others. I become my vendors’ biggest advocate — the same way that I want my clients to go to bat for me. It would be very hard for me to work with people who consistently missed their deadlines and/or exceeded their initial budgets by ghastly sums.

My vendors like working for me because I do the following:

Pay them on time
Send business their way
Clearly state what I need and by when
Don’t make them hit moving targets
Respond quickly when the need my input

Again, Do Unto Others…

All too often, I hear about how these amazing business owners encounter bipolar, demanding, indecisive, difficult clients (not me, I assure you). They have picked up the phone to vent to me. Essentially, they wish they could fire their clients.

And they can. It’s not that hard.

A Little Yarn

A few years ago, I did some consulting for a guy who drove me nuts. (Call him Stu here.) This guy was a real peach. He was unclear about the specific things he wanted from me. Stu expected me to drop whatever I was doing whenever he had fifteen minutes to spare. He questioned my billable hours. Stu became upset when I couldn’t read his mind. To boot, he conveniently forgot to pay me for six weeks past my invoice’s terms

Throughout the entire project, I did my best to keep up a professional face. And, needless to say, when Stu came calling again a few months later, I politely declined.

Problem solved.

Simon Says

I’m not trying to put myself on a pedestal here. But the lesson here is to recognize that some clients are far more trouble than they are worth. If it’s too late to cut them off, think about firing them after your current engagements end.

Some people will call you crazy for turning down work in a downward economy. Pay them no heed. If you have the ability to call your own shots, you should use it. In any economy, some clients are far more trouble than they’re worth.

Do yourself a favor: get rid of them.

Feedback

What say you?

This post originally appeared on the PitneyBowes’ Small Biz Essentials website.

 

The post When a Client Isn’t Worth Keeping appeared first on Phil Simon:.

Tips for Managing Business Conflicts

One of my favorite books is Getting to Yes (affiliate link). In it, the authors write about ways to reach an agreement when interests collide. The book has long been a bestseller and its principles are as valuable today as they were when it was originally released in 1981.

Of course, conflict cannot always be avoided. So it is critical for small business owners to remember the following when a joint venture or customer or client relationship breaks bad.

Recognize that some conflict is unavoidable.

Adam Smith believed that free markets would result in an efficient—if unfair—allocation of goods. That may well be, but business can be confrontational. Sometimes, one party’s victory equates to another’s loss. Many conflicts simply cannot be averted. You might want something done in two weeks while your partner or service provider has six months in mind. In this case, it’s unlikely that either party will be satisfied with a compromise.

Determine how much friction you can withstand.

Depersonalize the offending party.

Are there scam artists out there and generally unsavory folks? You bet, but most of the time disagreements stem from genuine miscommunications or conflicting priorities.

There’s a big difference between seeing things through different lenses and deliberately undermining a project, client, or event. Unless you have good reason to suspect otherwise, give your partner or client the benefit of the doubt.

Use the courts as a last resort.

Conflicts can often be resolved amicably. Small businesses often lack the financial and human resources to litigate a particularly contentious matter.

Determine how much friction you can withstand.

Lawsuits are expensive and, when time, money, and frustration are factored in, few ever win. Attorney fees add up and, almost always, the outcome is anything but immediate. Months or years are not uncommon for many small suits. Consider alternative dispute resolution or arbitration for quick and relatively painless ways to move on.

Understand where you are in the process.

At times, small business owners reach the point of no return with their partners or clients. Let’s say that you’re working on a new project and a key employee goes AWOL. What to do? Well, it depends. If you’re just getting started, then you may very well be able to replace him or her. If you’re in the final stages, though, that’s less likely to be possible.

This is a tricky one. Absolutes are few and far between; by definition, most conflicts arise somewhere in the middle of a project or engagement. Figure out the costs and benefits of making a change and go with your gut.

Walk away from a relationship if it just isn’t working.

A few years ago, one of my partners openly questioned my integrity in front of a client. This was a typical CYA move designed to deflect responsibility for her dropping the ball and causing a problem with the client.

It’s important to draw boundaries and enforce them, even if that means walking away. When people show their true colors, ask yourself if it’s really worth working with them in the present—and in the future.

Feedback

What say you?

This post originally appeared on the PitneyBowes’ Small Biz Essentials website.

The post Tips for Managing Business Conflicts appeared first on Phil Simon:.

A Few Thoughts on Fixing Healthcare.gov

President Obama is mad as hell about the Heathcare.gov debacle and he ought to be.

I’ve worked on enough healthcare IT projects to know that, behind the scenes, plenty of blame is being passed around. Blame can be sorted out later. As for now, the imperative question becomes, How does this get fixed?

The administration won’t get ten bites at this apple.

Well, the answer isn’t pretty. At this point, Obama et. al has to throw as many financial and human resources at it as possible. They’re clearly in damage control mode. It’s a race against the clock. The stakes are too high. The administration won’t get ten bites at this apple.

A proper post-mortem isn’t an option right now but rest assured: it’s coming, and heads are going to roll. After the dust settles, expect the people responsible to do the following:

Minimize the number of vendors involved on the project–and future projects of this scope.
Stop trying to get a little bit pregnant with open source. Make all of the code open source so other people can spot flaws and recommend improvements. Plenty of people want to help. Think crowdsourcing.
Quickly remove employees and firms not getting the job done.
Do much more testing before relaunching it. Enlisting volunteers and third-party services like Amazon Mechanical Turk to pound the system and assess its strength.
Establish a clear chain of command.

I find it interesting disturbing that arguably the chief system integrator CGI Federal only now is putting its A-team on the project. One has to wonder why those folks weren’t originally assigned to such a high-profile project.

The post A Few Thoughts on Fixing Healthcare.gov appeared first on Phil Simon:.

Big Data FAQ: Separating the Signal from the Noise

This post originally ran on InformationWeek.

Many questions about Big Data have yet to be answered in a vendor-neutral way. With so many definitions, opinions run the gamut. Here I will attempt to cut to the heart of the matter by addressing some key questions I often get from readers, clients and industry analysts.

What is the role of intuition in the era of Big Data? Have machines and data supplanted the human mind?

Contrary to what some people believe, intuition is as important as ever. When looking at massive, unprecedented datasets, you need someplace to start. In Too Big to Ignore, I argue that intuition is more important than ever precisely because there’s so much data now. We are entering an era in which more and more things can be tested.

Big Data has not replaced intuition–at least not yet; the latter merely complements the former. The relationship between the two is a continuum, not a binary.

A key piece of Big Data is its reliance on “unstructured” and “semi-structured” data. Can you explain what’s going on here?

Roughly 80% of the information generated today is of an unstructured variety. Small Data is still very important -e.g., lists of customers, sales, employees, and the like. Think Excel spreadsheets and database tables. However, tweets, blog posts, Facebook likes, YouTube videos, pictures, and other forms of unstructured data have become too big to ignore.

Again, Big Data here serves as a complement to–not a substitute for–Small Data. When used right, Big Data can reduce uncertainty, not eliminate it. We can know more about previously unknowable things. We can solve previously vexing problems. And finally, there’s the Holy Grail: Big Data is helping organizations make better predictions and better business decisions.

Data visualization is becoming more popular than ever. Will dataviz be a requirement for people to be able to understand the insights that Big Data can deliver?

In my opinion, it is absolutely essential for organizations to embrace interactive data visualization tools. Blame or thank Big Data for that.

And these tools are amazing. They are helping employees make sense of the never-ending stream of data hitting them faster than ever. Our brains respond much better to visuals than rows on a spreadsheet. Dataviz can help us understand what’s going on and ask better questions of the data.

Companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Netflix, and many others understand the cardinal need to visualize data. And this goes way beyond Excel charts, graphs or even pivot tables. Companies like Tableau Software have allowed non-technical users to create very interactive and imaginative ways to visually represent information.

Data science, some say, is actually a mix of art and science–the art of knowing what to look at amidst a profusion of information. Can you explain a bit about this? How people can develop those skills?

The data scientist is one of the hottest jobs in the country right now, and probably the world. In a recent report, McKinsey estimated that the U.S. will soon face a shortage of approximately 175,000 data scientists. Demand far exceeds supply, especially given the hype around Big Data.

Get used to Big Data. It really has become too big to ignore.

However, to become a data scientist one does not necessarily follow a linear path. There are many myths surrounding data scientists. True data scientists possess a wide variety of skills. Most come from backgrounds in statistics, data modeling, computer, science and general business. Above all, however, they are a curious lot. They are never really satisfied. They enjoy looking at data and running experiments.

We seem to be entering an era of exponential growth of data. Is there a point at which many enterprise systems will cease to operate?

It’s an interesting point, and I discuss it in Chapter 4 of Too Big to Ignore. If we look at the relational databases that organizations have historically used to store and retrieve enterprise information, then you are absolutely right. However, new tools like MapReduce, Hadoop, NoSQL, NewSQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and others allow organizations to store much larger data sets. The old boss is not the same as the new boss.

How will Big Data impact small businesses? Will we see an era in which every business (even barbershops or corner stores) will somehow be leveraging Big Data?

In my book, I write about a few relatively small organizations that have taken advantage of Big Data. Quantcast is one of them. There’s no shortage of myths around Big Data, and one of the most pernicious is that an organization needs thousands of employees and billions in revenue to take advantage of it. Simply not true.

I don’t know in the near future if my electrician or my barber will embrace Big Data. I certainly have my doubts. (I haven’t visited a proper barber in years, but you get my point.) However, we are living in an era of ubiquitous and democratized technology.

Can you talk about how Big Data will trickle down and impact individuals? Are there direct ways this will impact our day-to-day lives in the coming years?

It’s already happening. Big Data is affecting our lives in more ways than we can possibly fathom. The recent NSA PRISM scandal shed light on the fact that governments are tracking what we’re doing. Companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others would not be nearly as effective without Big Data.

I encourage people not to think about Big Data in an abstract manner. I wrote Too Big to Ignore to emphasize its practical uses and tell some interesting business stories.

As you know, most people don’t work in data centers. Rather, it’s better for people to know about the companies whose services they use. Are those companies using Big Data? These days, the answer is probably yes. By extension, then, Big Data is affecting you whether you know it or not.

In addition, as more and more companies embrace Big Data, there will be major disruption in the workforce. In the book, I write about how Big Data will in many instances replace certain jobs. This is always the case with creative destruction.

Are “Big Data skills” something that everyone will need to learn moving forward? Or will it become simple enough over time that anyone can do it–much like anyone who knows Microsoft Word can update a website now versus needing to know HTML 15 years ago? What skills do workers need to sharpen to prepare for the era of Big Data?

I hesitate to say that everyone will need to learn data-related skills. Dataphobes will always exist, for better or worse. (Again, the barber example is a good one.) However, knowledge workers will have to follow, lead or get out of the way. Based upon my research, we have entered a more data-oriented world. Millennials are particularly comfortable with data. They are constantly interacting with technology and data. Wearable technology and the Internet of Things are coming, and soon.

Get used to Big Data. It really has become too big to ignore.

The post Big Data FAQ: Separating the Signal from the Noise appeared first on Phil Simon:.

Dataviz and Organizational Health

The era of Big Data has arrived, but so has the hype. Many organizations are confounded about what to do. Fortunately, tools like Hadoop dramatically increase data storage capabilities.

But, as I write in Too Big to Ignore, he who stores the most data doesn’t win. Moreover, storing data doesn’t necessarily tell you what you need to know. How do you know if there’s a budding problem? A massive opportunity?

An Example

For instance, imagine for a moment that you’re working in a network operations center. How do you get your arms around what’s going on? Failing to act may yield disastrous consequences–not only for the NOC, but for many other affected parties.

In point of fact, IT operations folks have visualized Small Data for decades. Network ops centers normally employ multiple screens to monitor what’s taking place. Think War Games. Typically of great import are the statuses of different systems, networks, and pieces of hardware. Record-level data has historically been rolled into summaries. A simple red or green status has presented data in an easily digestible and highly visible format.

Organizations can now maintain, access, and analyze petabytes of raw data.

Over the last few years, the status quo in many NOCs has given way to recent technological advancements. We have seen a transformation of sorts. Tools like Hadoop allow for the easy and inexpensive collection of vastly more data than even a decade ago–especially the unstructured kind. As a result, NOCs can now maintain, access, and analyze petabytes of raw data. Next-generation dataviz tools can interpret this raw data on the fly, allowing employees to conduct ad hoc analyses.

Brass tacks: With the right tools, it’s now relatively easy to summon virtually unlimited data for any given area into a simple webpage. Dataviz tools let employees spot anomalies and diagnose operational issues before they turn red.

Simon Says: Use Dataviz to Understand the Health of Your Organization

New dataviz tools can help organizations understand the massive data streams coming at them faster than ever. Never has it been more important to capture, analyze, and present a real-time view into the health of your business. Start with the data. The knowledge should then flow.

Feedback

What say you?

 

While the words and opinions in this post are my own, Corvil has compensated me to write it.

The post Dataviz and Organizational Health appeared first on Phil Simon:.