Big data can be a new tool of corporate competitiveness that offers vast business opportunities, but proper use and analysis of the massive volume of data will require new sets of skills and mind-sets on the part of management, said Phillip Leslie, an associate professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Speaking at the May 31 symposium that gathered American business school scholars, Leslie noted that after companies in the United States invested heavily on building the capacity to process big data in recent years, the firms "are increasingly asking the question — all this data, all this infrastructure, all this spending, and now what do we do with it?"
"We are at a critical moment where companies need to figure out exactly how to utilize this data to address strategically important questions that will allow them to create and capture value," he said.