The Corvus | August 2018
county in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin,
Trump would go there and give an
immigration-focused speech. When
you consider how a few thousand
votes in a handful of swing states
determined the election, their impact
on the elections could be termed
significant. The potential uses of Big
Data in government flows both ways as
well. Data has the power to transform
civic education and engagement,
empowering ordinary citizens to hold
governments to better account, while
also enabling government to better
allocate resources to the most deficient
areas or citizens.
Questions on a brave new world
While a tremendously exciting prospect,
the dangers of an increasingly open
world are not trivial. Hackers thrive as
valuable information is available from
all sorts of data repositories.
Individuals, corporates and governments
must pay attention to the security and
integrity of their data management
processes. An unintended consequence
of government data collection and
utilization efforts will be the rise of data
“Black markets”, as people find ways
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to boost their online reputations. As
online interactions continue to lead
to increasingly significant real world
effects, we expect to see the rise of
reputation black markets where people
can boost their credibility, much in the
same way that people can now buy
twitter followers and Instagram likes as
signals of credibility and influence.
The monopolization of the oil industry
in the 20th century evoked a rise in
regulatory inventions such as the Anti-
Trust rules. These rules resulted in the
break up of Standard Oil Company
in 1911 after John D. Rockerfeller;
Chairman of Standard Oil appeared
before the US Congress contesting the
break up whilst sitting on the same
seat Mark Zuckerberg sat on during
the Facebook data scandal hearing a
few months ago. We expect to witness
a rise in judicial and legislative clamor
for increased regulatory oversight into
the processes and uses of big data
repositories to avoid unwholesome
practices, prevent anti-trust tendencies
and prescribe compliance guidelines
and sanctions. An effective data driven
business strategy therefore will have to
pay attention to the ethical concerns
around the gathering, storage and
usage of data on customer interactions.
Laws would need to be updated to
reserve rights to privacy, intellectual
property, delineation of responsibilities,
limits of liability and such other
concerns that may emerge.
Opportunity for the taking
The power and potential of big data
to create massive improvements in our
standards of living is widely accepted.
This is one of the reasons for the wide
proliferation of companies and start-ups
looking to leverage big data strategies
as a springboard to establish businesses
across all industries. However, the
term “Big Data” itself describes
datasets too large for individuals or
consumers to process. Hence, there
remains a financial barrier to entry that
automatically favors wealthy individuals
and corporations.
Many businesses have the advantage
of long-standing client relationships,
deep pockets of expertise and scale. By
prioritizing a handful of specific customer
outcomes, such as reduced churn or
improved cross-sell, and setting up
small, dedicated cross-functional teams
to experiment, refine, and release new
approaches, established players can
generate significant returns and future-
Data is the New Black Gold
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