MIT Sloan Management Review

Based on a global executive survey with 2,500+ respondents and interviews with more than two dozen executives and academics, MIT Sloan Management Review and SAS Institute Inc. report on the distinctive characteristics and habits of companies that are very effective at using analytics to compete and innovate. This report offers an in-depth analysis of Analytical Innovators, the early leaders in the analytics revolution that is changing how many companies are managed.

Some companies have a counting problem when it comes to data. Revenues, customers and leads can be counted the same way by all managers…or not. Director of MIT’s Center for Information System Research discusses the growing interest in data analytics and how one company that was in the red dealt with business unit heads all of whom were reporting profits.

Do you know how much data is being collected about you at any given time by any given organization? Concerns about privacy in the new era of big data are making the rounds at many companies and being discussed by universities, governments and global institutions. This blogpost discusses some of the major privacy concerns about big data, how to address them and has a special focus on Equifax, the credit company that has 800 billion records with details on 500 million consumers and 81 million businesses in 17 countries.

A lot of the talk about analytics focuses on its potential to provide huge insights to company managers. But analyst Simon Robinson of 451 Research says that on the more basic level, the global conversation is about big data’s more pedestrian aspects: how do you store it, and how do you transmit it?

David Kiron, executive editor of MIT SMR‘s Innovation Hubs, attended “Big Data: Making Complex Things Simpler,” a two-day seminar taught by MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson and Sandy Pentland. Kiron shares insights from the course, including how cheap flows of data enable faster experimentation and the privacy implications of Big Data.

Big Data is now a $64 billion business, says McKinsey Global Institute. Among the start-ups in the fray: Bluefin Labs, which analyzes what we say in social media about TV.

Does your company rely on intuition or analytics for decision making? Are the tech challenges less onerous than the cultural ones? Tell us your experiences in our second annual survey. You could win a free Apple iPad2.

Does your organization have more data than it really knows what to do with?

If so, you're not alone.

Thinking about ways to harness the potentials of online, mass, collaborative analysis of data isn’t only possible for companies, it’s absolutely necessary.

Are organizations generating more answers from analytics than they can act on? Join MIT Sloan Management Review's Michael S. Hopkins in a virtual panel discussion of this question and the findings of the special report, "Analytics: The New Path to Value."

“We’re rapidly entering a world where everything can be monitored and measured,” Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, said in an article in The New York Times.