Acumen's free course: The Lean for Social Change

Acumen has a new free course soon! The Lean for Social Change course will teach you how to test, validate, and adapt your business model to ensure you’re creating the greatest impact and investing your time in something that truly meets your customer’s needs. The course starts June 23rd. Did we mention it's free?!

https://novoed.com/lean-social-change

What Chinese citizens are concerned about

Consumption of bottled drinking water in China has grown 16% a year for the past five years, reaching $13 billion in 2013. Undoubtedly, the rising concern of water pollution has been the major contributor to this. Of Chinese consumers' main concerns, air and water pollution had the most significant change over the period in the number who think they are a big problem, rising 11% and 7% respectively.

Via: http://www.mckinseychina.com/

Open data matters

Open data is data that can be freely used, built-on and shared by anyone. 

Open can be applied to information from any source. Any person is able to make  their data public under an open licence for free use - by and benefit to the public. Not only government and public sector bodies are releasing public information such as budgets or maps. ANY organisation can open information. Corporations, universities, NGOs, startups, charities, etc. 

The explanation of what open means applies to all kind of information sources and types. Open may also apply both to data – big data and small data – or to content, like images, text and music.  Web crawl data can be used to spot trends and identify patterns in economics, health, politics, popular culture and many other aspects of life. 

Governance

Open data is an important tool for effective public mangement in the 21st century. It is a tool upholding the values of transparency, participation, and collaboration in tangible ways that benefit the people.

Important values that can built up from open data sources. And important elements for a better performance management, either for public and private sector.

Transparency. Government and enterprises should provide citizens (or stakeholders) with information about what they are doing. So that people can be held accountable.

Participation. Government and private companies should actively solicit expertise from outside. 

Collaboration. Executives, government and third sector should work together with one another and with people as part of doing their job of solving problems.

Turning dirty data into business insights: a big challenge

Organizations are increasingly using analytics and business intelligence to improve the customer experience. Different ways of delivering customer-facing analytics has built new business models and given companies a competitive edge in their market place.
In a recent study, McKinsey & Company surveyed executives about the functional areas where they are focusing on using big data and analytics to improve their organization’s decisions and performance. The results are:

Source: McKinsey & Company 2012 global C-level survey, “Minding Your Digital Business,” including responses from 1,469 executives

We know that data has no value unless it is turned into information and knowledge. This is the only way to turn this sea of numbers and charts into effective customer insights. To get this rich information, we need a plan that brings together data, analytics, frontline tools, and people to create business value. Tim McGuire, McKinsey director, quote meant a lot for us: “Analytics will define the difference between the losers and winners going forward”. Difficult? Yes. But possible.