The Value of Big Data Creation

How do firms transform big data in order to create value? Why do firms differ in their abilities to create value from big data? These questions continued popping up for researchers Jing Zeng and Keith Glaister as they learned more and more about organizational data analysis. Just like census work or analytics of the past, today’s big data analysis seeks to gather intelligence from data and translate that via research into benefits for the organization. And unlike the past, key characteristics mean that the latest analysis of big data is more powerful than the analytics that were formerly used.

By using the questions asked above as templates to conduct research, their study – which appears in Strategic Organization — investigates how managers create value from big data.

“Drawing on qualitative data, ” they write in  “Value creation from big data: Looking inside the black box,” “we observe that firms differ in their abilities to extract value from big data, both internally within the firm and externally across the extended data-sharing network.”

“It is not the data itself, or individual data scientists, that generate value creation opportunities,” they write. “Rather, value creation occurs through the process of data management, where managers are able to democratize, contextualize, experiment and execute data insights in a timely manner.”

Jing (Maggie) Zeng holds a PhD from Newcastle University and has previously worked as a project adviser for small enterprises. She currently teaches business strategy for internet platform companies, Operations Management for Industry 4.0 & Big Data. Keith Glaister is a leading researcher in the field of international strategic management; he has published five books and over 80 articles in leading journals. As a professor, he has taught both in the UK and North America.

The entire article is available for free on SAGE Insight.