Innovation : Combining BIG DATA with THICK DATA
“The BIG DATA analysis with artificial intelligence (AI) is making rapid progress and shows us with customers who buys what, where, when, how or how much or interacts with the company. But the enlightening “why” is missing to make important strategic corporate decisions for the future. This requires THICK DATA like STORYlistening® – and BIG DATA becomes SMART DATA for new business ideas, markets & products / services.“
Dr. Olaf Rughase
Strategic SMART DATA = Combining BIG DATA with THICK DATA
BIG DATA and its analysis with artificial intelligence (AI) is definitely the future for companies to optimize efficiency and their own offers. Many companies have long since arrived in this future, invest in digital transformation and rely on data-driven management systems.
Large and particularly successful (data-driven) digital companies in the USA, such as Netflix or Uber, have now recognized that it is important for strategic decisions and innovations to have the right data: they link BIG DATA with THICK DATA for their business to successfully develop strategically.
While BIG DATA provides with customers “who”, “what”, “when”, “how much” or “how” bought a product/servive or interacted with the company, THICK DATA decodes the underlying “why”.
STORYlistening® is THICK DATA. It decodes the meanings, the importance or the context that customers assign to the offers, services, technologies or consumption processes. It integrates emotions, experiences, convictions or prejudices with the hard facts of BIG DATA and provides explanations, insights and inspiration instead of pure speculation. This is how BIG & THICK DATA becomes strategic SMART DATA.
With this SMART DATA it is now possible to quickly and specifically develop new products, services, positioning, business areas or business models.
As an experienced corporate developer, Schindl Rughase Partners has created the Innovation In/sight offering, to implement real and achievable innovations quickly and pragmatically into reality with professional product, digital or technology designers as well as marketing and advertising agencies.
Leave disruptive innovations to others and rely on innovations that quickly bring a return on investment. Link your BIG DATA with STORYlistening® data.
The smart digital companies in the USA are already relying on THICK DATA
Netflix – evolving the business model
Netflix is probably the best-known company for using algorithms and AI for many decisions, which, for example, leads to particularly appropriate film or series recommendations. But Netflix didn’t know what was happening “in front of” the screen: what do people eat when they watch Netflix? What are they doing?
For this, Netflix hired the anthropologist Grant McCracken. He literally sat on the couches of Netflix customers and his results went around the world – but one finding was central to Netflix: McCracken found that people liked to watch series “in one piece” – today called “binge watching”. That could already be found in the BIG DATA, but Netflix could not attach any importance to this data and therefore simply overlooked it.
With the background of THICK DATA, Netflix has made a decisive and now legendary adjustment of the business model: Netflix began to offer a new model for the distribution of series, in which instead of a weekly chapter (as with HBO) the entire season was published at once. This had a massive impact on the way customers used Netflix and how they experienced their relationship with the brand. Today, the phenomenon of “binge watching” has gone into the language and culture of young Americans with terms like “Netflix and Chill”.
uberPOOL – developing new fields of business
In 2014, Uber launched the uberPOOL service. Here, strangers can share a trip and thus share the cost of the trip. So it is cheaper than traditional Uber, but it usually takes a little longer.
But while a traditional Uber experience is more like a “taxi” ride, sharing a trip with a stranger touches a variety of other, uncertain factors and considerations: How much longer does the trip take? Do I have to wait long? How much cheaper is the trip? How does the stranger behave?
Uber is known for using BIG DATA and AI extensively to improve its own mobility offering. But while Uber can cover many factors with AI, e.g., several factors of the journey, the matching of people and their destinations, optimal travel routes or expected arrival times, uberPOOL leaves open the central questions of personal considerations or other contextual factors, all of which significantly influence the decision of a shared journey.
Uber has therefore had extensive discussions with customers to get THICK DATA about these unknown factors. In a multi-stage process, possible pool offers were later discussed with customers (customer co-creation) in order to create the “Perfect POOL”.
The results showed, among other things, that customers are willing to go further to meeting points and drop-off points and accept longer waiting times if the journey is cheaper and a more direct route to the destination is taken.
With this THICK DATA background and the requirements derived from it, the AI was able to create “perfect POOLS”. This has become Uber’s cheapest offer since 2017: Express POOL.
Source of inspiration
“THICK DATA like STORYlistening® data have several qualities that quantitative data cannot express – but one quality in particular: inspiration. Regardless of whether you like the discovered worlds of customers or not, share or disagree with customers or even being frustrated by customer beliefs – they always generate inspiration from which good ideas for new products, markets and business areas emerge.“
Dr. Michael Schindl