Cause Analytics

Why Real Innovation Will Not Come From Within Your Own Industry

Asking, "What could cause you to change your mind?", is a simple way to reduce your odds of becoming a victim of strategic surprise in 2016.

Dan Durrant:
Breaking free of your comfort zone
Some good pointers in this piece. Talk to new people. Seek new perspectives. Be open to discovery!
... I like this excerpt: Habitual thinking is the brain's way to be efficient, but it also tends to keep you in your comfort zone. If you know what works one time, your brain starts to recognize this and create more defined neural pathways that allow you to almost unconsciously create an efficient action.
#DriveInnovation #Entrepreneurs
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Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy
Citation: McKinsey Global Institute, cuts through the noise and identifies 12 technologies that could drive truly massive economic transformations and disruptions in the coming years. The report also looks at exactly how these technologies could change our world, as well as their benefits and challenges, and offers guidelines to help leaders from businesses and other institutions resp...ond. . . . Business leaders should keep their organizational strategies updated in the face of continually evolving technologies, ensure that their organizations continue to look ahead, and use technologies to improve internal performance. Disruptive technologies can change the game for businesses, creating entirely new products and services, as well as shifting pools of value between producers or from producers to consumers. Organizations will often need to use business-model innovations to capture some of that value. Leaders need to plan for a range of scenarios, abandoning assumptions about where competition and risk could come from, and not be afraid to look beyond long-established models. Organizations will also need to keep their employees’ skills up-to-date and balance the potential benefits of emerging technologies with the risks they sometimes pose.
Source: http://www.mckinsey.com/…/business_…/ disruptive_technologies
#Executives #AnticipateChange #DisruptiveInnovation #DriveInnovation
Posted by Dan Durrant
Cause Analytics is here to help you navigate through Business Intelligence, understand today's challenges and tomorrow's technologies.
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When robots buy you gifts with your money
Cass Sunstein produced a nationally representative survey in the #USA, with about 500 respondents and a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. He discovered that a "significant percentage of Americans already welcome predictive shopping." What is predictive shopping? Well, he explains it without saying anything about #robots, but you know, it's possible.
Citation: AS almost everyone knows, we have entered a period in ...which companies can predict people’s purchases, often with uncanny accuracy. In the near future, they might even use those predictions to enroll you in special programs in which you receive goods and services, and are asked to pay for them, before you have actually chosen them. Call it predictive shopping. . . . [Example] . . . The situation was presented like this: Suppose that over the years, your favorite online bookseller has compiled a great deal of information about your preferences. On the basis of a new algorithm, it thinks it knows what you will want to buy before you do. I asked, would you enroll in a program in which the seller sent you books that it knew you would purchase, and billed your credit card? (Anyone could send the book back for a refund or just opt out of the program.) Fifty-nine percent said no, but 41 percent said yes.
Read more at the NYTimes: http://goo.gl/2CosDB
#PredictiveAnalytics #Retail #ArtificialIntelligence
Posted by Dan Durrant Image: Employees of a food stand take pictures of Titan, a robot created by England Cyberstein Robots, performing at the Danilovsly market in downtown of Moscow, Russia, 12 May 2014. (EPA/SERGEI ILNITSKY) http://goo.gl/2Vk4zc _ _ _ Cause Analytics is here to help you navigate through Business Intelligence, understand today's challenges and tomorrow's technologies.
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We're excited to see our Anticipate Change community at 100 members!
We'd especially like to thank those of you who often take notice of and contribute to the content shared here: Colin Kilburn Gregory Esau Luis Vidal Jann Van Hamersveld Maria Nieves Lorenzo Galés Rotana Ty Marie Kenerson Jan Wyllie Peter Feltham Ferananda Ibarra Michael Josefowicz Inma VP
Image via motortrend: http://goo.gl/z2lEVm
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Uncovering the realities of today’s digital marketing landscape (whitepaper)
Citation: Sitecore recently engaged an independent research firm to conduct an international study on digital marketing trends and challenges. A few highlights:
• 73 percent of marketers plan to increase their digital marketing spend in the next year.
... • In the next year, 44 percent of marketers plan to use a predictive analytics tool, but only 18 percent use predictive analytics today.
http://venturebeat.com/…/uncovering-the -realities-of-today…/
#Analytics #Sales #Marketing #Purchasing #PredictiveAnalytics Posted by Dan Durrant
Cause Analytics is here to help you navigate through Business Intelligence, understand today's challenges and tomorrow's technologies.
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Anticipatory Management: Tools for Better Decision Making
Citation: One way to understand what's going on outside the organization and use that understanding to make better decisions and plans is to follow the Anticipatory Management Decision Process Model (Figure 1). This "outside-in" intelligence flow chart has been used with great success in a variety of corporate settings. / #DecisionMaking . . . ... The first step is to identify emerging issues before they strike, much like earthquake forecasters scan fault lines for signs of abnormal activity. Because significant issues may emerge from unexpected places, it is important to scan the macroenvironment for social, technological, economic, environmental, and political developments. / #AnticipateChange #BlackSwanEvents
Anything can happen in any of these sectors to change the future, such as an oil embargo, a wave of immigration, or a new zoning ordinance. Trends and events converge to create issues, such as environmental protection, product liability, energy availability, and technostress. / #Globalisation
A signal may be a demographic trend, such as a "baby bust," which may mean a severe dearth of entry-level workers in the future, or an environmental trend, such as a buildup of greenhouse gases, which portends global warming. As signals like these get louder, your action options narrow and your potential liabilities increase. Therefore, the sooner you can identify emerging issues, the more options you will have. You can use the following tools to identify emerging issues and where they are in their life cycle: / #Demographics
Scanning, monitoring, and forecasting. Scanning identifies signals of change and monitoring follows these signals. [...] Next comes forecasting, which estimates the duration, direction, acceleration, and amplitude of the signals.
Challenging assumptions. We all have certain assumptions about our organization and the world. These assumptions develop over time and become...
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Tech spend to increase in 2014 as executives explore #BigData: http://buff.ly/1jbPkLt

Value nets: 21C #SupplyChain http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.ht m?articleid=872787
Citation: A value net is a dynamic network of customer/supplier partnerships and information flows. It is activated by real customer demand and is capable of responding rapidly and reliably to customer preferences. A value net is so named because it creates value for all of its participants – company, suppliers, and customers – and because these participants operate within a collaborative..., digitally linked network.
For companies that design their businesses around it, a value net is a practical strategy for providing what so many Internet-age consumers and business customers now demand: customized products, fast order fulfillment, and products bundled with services they value. Customers’ expectations are growing relentlessly, fueled by the Internet’s “click it and get it” proposition in industries as diverse as prescription drugs, custom-built furniture, pick-your-tunes music, and home-delivered groceries. Yet the performance of many companies, both dot-com start-ups and traditional incumbents alike, falls far short of expectations.
The problem lies in the traditional supply chain. Being linear, slow, and rigid, the supply chain can only guess at customer demand and then attempt to satisfy it with standardized products and average service. Materials move sequentially down the chain, where hand-offs, bottlenecks, and buffer stocks are commonplace. Information moves erratically, and customers are seldom in the loop. Speed and performance improvements are possible within this rigid, sequential system, but only at the margins. And because they are driven by forecasted demand, not real demand, inventories build up at every link in the chain (see Exhibit 2). . . . . A value net unlocks this rusty old supply chain. Based on a 1999 Mercer Management Consulting study of 30 companies in North America, Europe, and Asia, we find that value net companies share five characteristics:
(...
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Constellation identifies three technological shifts powering digital business disruption http://goo.gl/dW9Obj
Re: #DriveInnovation #FutureTechnologies
1) Mass personalization at scale drives relevancy and context. Systems of engagement shift to systems of mass personalization at scale that deliver relevancy. [...] These systems start with an outcome-driven design point, solve delivery of massive individual scale, craft personalized conversations, interface with human API...s and enable people-to-people networks. Key technologies include 3D printers, ad technologies, augmented reality, context engines, crypto currencies, identity systems, facial recognition, payment technologies, digital wallets and personal clouds. / #Cloud #APIs #Consumerisation
2) Big data business models built around sensor and analytical ecosystem. Isolated networks shift to a connected world of sensor-based and analytical ecosystems that harness Big Data. In both the consumer and enterprise worlds, smart machines and wearables provide new types of sensors and add to the mix of Big Data available to create new insights. Constellation estimates that as many as 200 million smart wearables will ship by 2017. These include bracelets, watches, eyewear and other devices with sensors. Data from equipment such as automobiles and trucks, medical devices, household appliances as well as power generators and building management systems can provide opportunities to improve operational efficiencies, create new business models and identify new usage patterns. / #BigData #Lifelogging #InternetofThings
3) Augmented humanity changes the future of work and customer experience. Powerful yet static systems shift to cognitive systems that augment humanity. Cognitive computing is more than a new category. Cognitive systems represent a convergence of artificial intelligence, natural language processing, dynamic learning, and hypothesis generation to render vast quantities of data...
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The #InternetofThings Ecosystem: Unlocking the business value of connected devices
This is the year that some experts predict more data will be generated by machines than by people—with that expectation comes renewed attention on the promise of IoT. In a recent survey, nearly 75 percent of executives indicated that their companies were exploring or adopting some form of IoT solution, and executives believe that integrating IoT into the main business is necessary in order to r...emain competitive. . . . . Re: #SaveMoney Delays in response time; lost, stolen, or misdeployed assets; process inefficiencies; and human error all drive higher operating costs for businesses. The right combinations of connected devices, infrastructure, data analytics, and processing—specific to the industry—can help companies reduce these types of costs. This is where the real value of IoT comes into play – in being able to take advantage of the almost boundless potential provided by the mass quantities of data produced in IoT transactions and making it valuable through advanced analytics.
Re: #RealTime #Analytics #Automation #Logistics For example, real-time data flowing from multiple sources, transferred automatically and without human intervention, can be integrated and analyzed (“mashed up”) to make business decisions. Specifically, a packaged foods distributor might mash point-of-sale data with weather forecasts, truck locations, and production data to predict stock-outs, reroute distribution, and reduce stale inventory write-offs. . . . Re: #Lifelogging #HumanResources #Mobile #Healthcare e, wearable devices allow companies to digitize employees, which may include tracking and providing feedback on behaviors that affect wellness or job effectiveness, and could improve productivity across the workforce with the right supporting systems. But wearables enable a far more innovative product/service in mobile health (mHealth) platforms—one that may actually disrupt the...
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MIT can now track a heart rate through a wall with Wi-Fi signals
Citation: Parents could watch their baby’s heart rate from another room without using any kind of wearable device or special sleeping pad with a new development out of MIT that uses Wi-Fi signals to track the rise and fall of peoples’ chests. . . . Based on a person’s chest rising and falling, the CSAIL group can determine their heart rate with 99 percent accuracy. The system can track up to four people at a ti...me. . . . . “It has traditionally been very difficult to capture such minute motions that occur at the rate of mere millimeters per second,” paper co-author Dina Katabi said in a release. “Being able to do so with a low-cost, accessible technology opens up the possibilities for people to be able to track their vital signs on their own.”
#Lifelogging #Futuretechnologies gigaom.com/…/mit-can-now-track-a-heart- rate-through-a-wall…/
Posted by Dan Durrant
Cause Analytics is here to help you navigate through Business Intelligence, understand today's challenges and tomorrow's technologies.
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Decisions in the Age of Abundant Data http://buff.ly/1izaNIC

Of open data case studies and time machines…
Case studies from The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), The Open Data Institute, and Transport API are mentioned. In the intro of this blog post by Harvey Lewis, Research Director of Analytics at Deloitte, we read:
“Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.” Samuel S. Wilks
... In an address to the American Statistical Association in 1951, Samuel Wilks paraphrased a passage from H.G. Wells’s book, Mankind in the making, which was published over 100 years ago. A mere eight years following the publication of The Time Machine, H.G. Wells predicted a future in which accessing and thinking about “…a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems…” would only be made possible if citizens had the ability to compute basic facts from data. In today’s world of open and big data, the passage is amazingly prescient, and speaks as much to the modern analytical needs of businesses as it does to the central role to be played in transparency by citizens.
All organisations now have access to a wealth of data on which to base their analyses and insight. This data can come from many different sources – some collected by the organisation itself but much from outside. And thanks to the efforts of UK government departments, local authorities and other public sector bodies, as well as organisations such as the Open Data User Group (ODUG) and the Open Data Institute (ODI), thousands of potentially useful external data sources are now being made available as open data on data.gov.uk – freely available for commercial and personal use.
Continue reading: http://data.gov.uk/…/open-data-case-stu dies-and-time-machin…
Image via nationalgeographic: http://goo.gl/icUsrD
#OpenData #CentralGovernment #UK #Transparency
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*Descriptive, Predictive, and Prescriptive #Analytics *
Analytics solutions are of three principal types: - Descriptive, which uses business intelligence and data mining to ask: “What has happened?” - Predictive, which uses statistical models and forecasts to ask: “What could happen?”... - Prescriptive, which uses optimization and simulation to ask: “What should we do?”
#PredictiveAnalytics #DecisionMaking
Source: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/…/en/tiw14162 usen/TIW14162USEN.PDF
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Cause Analytics is here to help you navigate through Business Intelligence, understand today's challenges and tomorrow's technologies.
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Quotes from _A Practitioner's Guide to #Business #Analytics by Randy Bartlett
“Most people use statistics the way a drunkard uses a lamp post, more for support than illumination.”
... “Speed is the thing. We prefer a team that has a relative speed advantage over other virtues.”
“Innovation tends to come in two flavors: (1) sudden and unexpected, and (2) planned, yet doggedly obtained.”
“Innovation comes from the producer—not from the customer.”
“opinion-based decision making, statistical malfeasance, and counterfeit analysis are pandemic. We are swimming in make-believe analytics.”
“Corporations will continue to be awash in dirty data and filthy information.”
“All revolutions are impossible till they happen, then they become inevitable.”
#DriveInnovation #DecisionMaking #Analysts #Collaboration
http://www.goodreads.com/…/22957433-a-p ractitioner-s-guide-…
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Cause Analytics is here to help you navigate through Business Intelligence, understand today's challenges and tomorrow's technologies.
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Transforming giants: Building resilience
Leadership expert and Harvard Business School professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, wrote Transforming giants for HBR in 2008, in which she argued that even profit-seeking behemoths can become agile while having a positive local impact upon their communities. It remains relevant today.
Citation: The common perception was that profit-seeking behemoths were dysfunctional. They were written off as lumbering, inflexible, reactive, and inherentl...y bureaucratic—as systems so closed they had lost the ability to see the problems in the world around them, let alone be part of the solutions. Yet talk to the leaders of some of the world’s biggest companies today, and you hear a different story. They’re claiming new abilities to shift organizational gears on a global basis and produce meaningful innovations quickly. . . . . Employees once acted mainly according to rules and decisions handed down to them, but they now draw heavily on their shared understanding of mission and on a set of tools available everywhere at once. They more readily think about the meaning of what they do in terms of the wider world and include external partners in the extended family. Authority is still exercised and activities are still coordinated—but thanks to common platforms, standardized processes, and, above all, widely shared values and standards, coherence now arises more spontaneously. This shift is often heralded, and in most of these companies it has been a long time coming. But now it is happening with dramatic effects.
hbr.org/2008/01/transforming-giants/ar/1 image via: http://leadershipbeyondlimits.com/…/Tra nsforming_Giants_hbr…
#BuildResilience #DriveInnovation #Partnerships #PositiveLocalImpact
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Cause Analytics is here to help you navigate through Business Intelligence, understand today's challenges and tomorrow's technologies.
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