For this year's Perspectives evening, we invited three of the world's most innovative data experts (more on each of them here) to share their views on the debate between big data and what we like to call thoughtful data - human data turned into actionable insights. This was the 4th of our biannual Perspectives events, but the first in the US - specifically Mountain View in the heart of Silicon Valley. I know you're probably busy, so in case you don't have 50 minutes to watch the entire evening's debate unfold, feel free to pick the one(s) you're interested in:
With the premiere of the National Geographic TV series ‘Genius’ about Einstein, the famed Professor has been back in the news. And as we get ready for the London leg of the Salesforce World Tour I was reflecting on their AI offering named after the great man himself. I’ve recently written on some of the limitations of big data in the enterprise space, but one thing struck me about how Einstein reached his breakthroughs in relation to big data.
It is well documented that Einstein thought in pictures rather than words. He didn’t achieve his great breakthroughs in the lab, but by performing visual experiments in his head. Einstein’s genius was to realise that language wasn’t enough to help him understand the wonders of nature. And whilst he knew that maths was the language of nature, the best way to grasp the true essence of nature was to visualise the maths in the real world. This started him on a journey of a series of Gedankenexperimenten – “thought experiments” to help him articulate his famous theory of relativity.
Stories about fake news continue to make the headlines. Facebook is currently struggling to avoid a barrage of criticism and questions over whether it is actually a media owner, and therefore should be regulated as a media company. As I read these stories I was struck by the relationship between the controversies over fake news in the consumer world and debates around big data in the business world.
In the age of big data, we look to algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) to supplement human abilities. According to Stephen Hawking, amongst others, AI may actually supplant humans altogether.
I’ll be clear about this from the beginning: This article’s purpose is to make a solid case for our new product. I hope you’ll be inspired to join me on this journey into the future of improving sales productivity!
We launched our new sales productivity solution to the world in March 2017. After narrowing our focus on a new product early 2016, the team worked ceaselessly (with a few yoga breaks!) to build a super simple interface for the user and a world-class intelligence platform on the backend. I’m incredibly proud and grateful for the amazing people, our clients, advisors and our team who have made vyn possible.
The conception of vyn – the moment I recognised the problem – began around 17 years ago: