Small Data Group

Big Data is everywhere. Yet many companies lack a clear vision for rolling out big data in practical, measured steps. At the same time, with social networking, BYOD, and expectations from interactions with brands like Amazon, Apple, and Nike, most employees have seen the potential, yet many aren’t equipped to harness this power in their workplace. The small data movement — which I’ve been writing about for the past 6 months (and thinking about for many years) — aims to address these challenges and re-envision the “last mile” of big data via consumer-style, more responsive, more social apps that truly turn insight into action.

Not surprisingly, this idea is getting a LOT of attention. In fact, over the past 6 months there’s been as much published about small data as there was in the previous 3 years. Clearly small data has gone big time as a theme, concept, and set of tools.

So why is small data taking off?

• First, while understandably there’s a lot of excitement about big data, there’s a growing reality that doing it at scale and waiting for all the trickle down benefits can take a lot of time. Especially if you’re not in the C-suite.

• Second, (and here’s where I jump on my soapbox), the last mile of big data is really where the value is created, opinions are formed, insights are shared, and action are made. By non data scientists. Everyday.

• Third, there’s some great consumer examples of small data hitting the stage, most notably the much hyped but potentially game-changing Google Glass, which brings together small data and visualization with wearable computing, all in a semi-stylish package.

So who is fueling the small data movement? I wrote about 10 vendors who get the value of enabling simple, smart, responsive, socially aware tools and solutions in my last post. And a couple weeks back I wrote about 5 additional vendors and a new study I’m doing with Digital Clarity Group in a post on the DCG blog, which you can read here.

As small data takes off, I will continue to provide updates and thoughts both here and on the DCG blog. As always I’d love your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below.

Thanks for stopping by!