The Surprising Predictive Power of Analytics

You have been predicted.

Companies, government, universities, law enforcement. All are using computers to predict what you will do.

Will you click on the link in the email?

When will you die?

Will you pay your credit card bill on time?

Are you pregnant?

Dr. Eric Siegel recently released Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie or Die. It’s a fascinating book that has surprisingly broad ramifications for all of us. Eric is a former Columbia University professor, the founder of Predictive Analytics World and Executive Editor of the Predictive Analytics Times.

Let’s start with the definition. What is predictive analytics?

It’s technology that gives organizations the power not only to predict the future, but to influence it. The shortest definition of predictive analytics is my book’s subtitle, the power to predict who will click, buy, lie, or die. Predictive analytics is the technology that learns from data to make predictions about what each individual will do–from thriving and donating to stealing and crashing your car. By doing so, organizations boost the success of marketing, auditing, law-enforcing, medically treating, educating, and even running a political campaign for president.

Why should the average person care about predictive analytics?

Prediction is the key to driving improved decisions, guiding millions of per-person actions. For healthcare, this saves lives. For law enforcement, it fights crime. For business, it decreases risk, lowers cost, improves customer service, and decreases unwanted postal mail and spam. It was a contributing factor to the reelection of the U.S. president.

Let’s jump to politics then. How did President Obama’s campaign gain an edge by using persuasion modeling?

The Obama campaign’s analytics team applied persuasion modeling (aka uplift modeling) in the same way it can be applied to marketing: drive per-person (voter/customer) campaign decisions by way of per-person predictions. If an individual is predicted to be persuadable, then make campaign contact (e.g., a knock on the door). By utilizing resources (campaign volunteers) more effectively in this way, the campaign enacted the new science of mass persuasion. They proved this won them more votes, within swing states and elsewhere.

Everyone is talking about “big data” but data on its own isn’t interesting or useful. You explain how data can show incredibly interesting insights including the fact that if you retire early, your life expectancy drops. Tell me more about that and what else we’ve learned from it.

Beyond the great hype around so much data, the real question is what to do with it. Answer: use data to predict human behavior.

The whole point of data is to learn from it to predict. Talking about how much data there is misses this point. What is the value, the function, the purpose? The one thing that makes the biggest difference to improve how organizations operate is to predict.

Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing

Photo Courtesy of istockphoto/Henrik5000

Close your eyes and imagine the future. What’s transportation like? How about food preparation? Communication? How about shopping?

Science fiction writers have long allowed us glimpses of possible future worlds. From Star Trek to Minority Report, we are fascinated by the potential of technology.

WAIT UNTIL YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS

One technology that has been around for decades but is only now starting to emerge in the public eye is the world of 3D printing. Science fiction fans, technologists and futurists may grasp this concept faster than most. And though I’m a student of futurists like Dan Burrus, and a frequent attendee of the Consumer Electronic Show, the reality of 3D printing is something my mind struggles to truly grasp.

Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman, leading experts on 3D printing, have written a new book Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing. It’s all about “the promise and peril of a machine that can make (almost) anything.”

I recently had the opportunity to ask the authors about this new world and where we are headed.

3D PRINTING TODAY

This technology is already in use today. Give us a few examples of where it’s in use, but we may not even think about it.

Yes, 3D printed products do indeed lurk amongst us in our daily lives. Many people don’t realize that 3D printing technology is not new; in fact, 3D printing has been in use in engineering and manufacturing environments as a prototyping tool for decades. If you look around your office or your car, almost every product — your chair, stapler, eyeglass frame and car mirror — probably started their life as a 3D-printed prototype. What’s new is that in the past few years, an increasing number of everyday actual products — not just prototypes used in the product design process — are made using 3D printing.

The medical field has been one of the first industries to embrace 3D printed products. Most hearing aids these days are 3D printed so they fit exactly the shape of your inner ear. Invisalign™ orthodontic braces are 3D printed, which makes sense since a personal and customized fit is critical when it comes to dental work. Many dentists are 3D printing crowns. On the cutting edge, surgeons are experimenting with 3D printed titanium hip and jaw implants designed using medical scans. If you pair a 3D printer with an optical scanner or a medical image, you can make custom prosthetics more quickly and accurately.

In general, the more a product benefits from being customized or personalized, the more likely it will be made via 3D printing. Right now, 3D printing is too slow and too costly for mass production.

Shape Your Company’s Future

Are you confident in your company’s future?

How do you rate your business strategy?

Is your team engaged in the creation of your plan?

Are you staying ahead of the competition and creating a sustainable advantage?

Shape Your Future

“Strategy is about shaping the future.”

That’s the opening line in The Strategy Book by Max Mckeown. In a logical, straightforward manner, Max walks readers through strategic principles and best practices in a way that educates the novice and the well-practiced strategist alike. Whether you are a CEO or a new team leader, Max provides helpful tools and checklists to improve your strategic plan.

Max Mckeown is an author of several best-selling, award winning books. He’s also a sought-after speaker on subjects ranging from competitive advantage to strategy to leadership. He holds an M.B.A. and Ph.D. from Warwick Business School in England.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Max about strategic best practices.

What’s the biggest misconception about creating a strategy?

Strategy isn’t a document. Some people believe that it is. And that’s probably why so many hard-working people roll their eyes when the strategy word is mentioned. Specifically, strategy is not leaders spending a million dollars on thick documents produced by outsiders to which insiders must align.

You’ve met thousands of managers and leaders in businesses around the world. When you meet a team, what attributes are present when you find an exceptionally high-performing team?

Strategy is about shaping the future. Perhaps this is why the roll-up-your-sleeves, get-things-done kind of people are often impatient with anything remotely connected to the word strategic. They want results. They tend to ignore the want-to-see-the-bigger-picture kind of people they see as daydreamers.

Move TO your future not AWAY from your past

Photo by Fellowship of the Rich on flickr.

People seem to be motivated by one of two forces. Either toward or against.

Both can be equally powerful motivators, but one seems to last.

Why are you in motion?

When I interview people for a job, I often ask questions about how the individual made career decisions. Some job changes were motivated by moving AWAY from something—a bad boss, a negative work environment, low pay. Other people make a change to move TOWARD something—a new opportunity, the ability to make a bigger impact, a better use of talent.

Though it’s not scientific validation, I’ve found that the people moving TOWARD the new opportunity are more successful, happier, and continue on an upward career path. These people are energized by the future, by what’s to come, by what’s possible.

Contrast that with the people moving AWAY from a job. It seems that the very same things that they didn’t like about the one job magically seemed to follow them to the next!

Moving TOWARD is more powerful than moving AWAY.

7 Triggers That Can Transform Your Business

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Daniel Burrus is a world renowned business strategist, futurist and technology forecaster. He is the CEO and founder of Burrus Research, a firm that helps spot trends for clients to take advantage of coming market forces. His latest book Flash Foresight is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.

In his book, he outlines seven principles of transformation including:

1. Start with certainty

2. Anticipate

3. Transform

4. Take your biggest problem—and skip it

5. Go opposite

6. Redefine and reinvent

7. Direct your future

You provide seven triggers for users to pursue to create their own flash foresights. What’s the history of the development of these triggers? Which came first? Did you end up discarding or merging other potential triggers?