Big Data, Bigger Map
Four years into building EMC Consulting across Asia Pacific and Japan, I keep two clocks in my head — Hong Kong and everywhere else. Twenty-two countries, one practice, and a business that was a whiteboard when I arrived in the region.
The phrase of the year is “big data,” and every client meeting opens with it. Underneath the phrase is a real problem: transactions, sensors, and customers generating information faster than anyone’s storage budget or attention span. The tools are young. The data is not waiting for them to grow up.
I finished my EMBA last month — the Kellogg-HKUST program here in Hong Kong. The classroom version of strategy is clean. The version out here is strategy that survives twenty-two countries of different rules, languages, holidays, and definitions of “end of week.”
One thing is clear from this side of the Pacific: data grows where the people are. Most of the people, and most of the growth, are here. Plan accordingly.