Massive Increases in Data: Fragmentation, Concentration and Economic Impact

With John Hagel III, Director and Co-Chair, Deloitte Center for the Edge LLP; and Eric Openshaw, Vice Chairman and US Technology, Media and Telecommunications Leader, Deloitte LLP

John Hagel addresses the impacts of big data at Future in Review.

John Hagel asks, What are the structural implications of big data? Will we all become independent contractors or will this concentrate talent? 

• “Both of these are going to happen” in different parts of the economy
  • Product implementation and adaptation as a market will fragment
  • Infrastructure providers like manufacturing and data centers will concentrate.
• Companies must adapt from a “product rules” mindset to coordinate on a global scale
• “I’d like to view big data as the new solar. It is a renewable source of highly disruptive value creation.”
• Media, tech and telecom have been at the forefront of data disruption; healthcare, financial services and the energy business will be next
• Discussion should not be about how to hand data to executives, but about how to feed it back to the front-line workers so that they can improve their performance based on real-time feedback.

Eric Openshaw says that the securitization of big data and disruptive opportunities keeps him awake every night.

• Crowd-sourced research is disrupting the work of traditional consultancies
• The best data is not necessarily the data that you own. Nor is that necessarily the most useful. Instead, there is enough outside publicly available information to predict bank failures and other trends ahead of time.