What is Little Data?

A lire sur: http://www.enterprisecioforum.com/en/blogs/jdodge/what-little-data

It's more fun, relevant and less expensive than Big Data.

Blog-post by John Dodge, 

Community Manager

, Tue, 06/03/2014 - 14:18

Is Little Data just a way to make everyone feel better about the Big Data that overwhelms us? Perhaps so.

So what is Little Data? That will be the focus of our Thursday Twitter chat from 2-3 p.m. EDT. Use hashtag #CIOchat.

I have been searching for the textbook definition of Little Data and of course there isn't one. But it's the data closest to us and that guides everyday decision making. HP blogger E.G. Nadhan just composed a post "Little Data is relevant information you consume when needed." He used the weather as an example.

Little Data is like a trail up a mountain. Big Data is like bushwhacking anywhere up the mountainside. You have less of a chance making it to the summit using the latter approach.

An Harvard Business Review (HBR) post from a month ago looks at Little Data as information that is closest to us and most meaningful.

"Little Data is what we know about ourselves. What we buy. Who we know. Where we go. How we spend our time. We’ve always had a sense for these things — after all, it’s our lives. But thanks to the combination of mobile, social, and cloud technologies, it’s easier than ever to gain insight into our own behavior."

Another  HBR article says companies are not getting much bang for their Big Data buck and possibly "never will." It concedes, though, that the few which use Big Data to guide decisions tend to be more profitable and better performing. 

"Over the past three years, we’ve conducted seven case studies and interviewed executives at 51 companies to understand how companies generate business value from data. We have found that those that consistently use data to guide their decision making are few and far between."

Another way to look at Little Data is data that can easily identified as helping to meet business objectives, according to this Forbes post.

To be honest, I don't know exactly what Little Data is, but it feels and smells more approachable, friendler, less expensive and less of a crap shoot than Big Data. Little Data is what life is about. Big Data is a massive and amoebic abstraction.

What do you think? We'll have rousing Twitter chat about Little Data Thursday.