With a background in sociology, Tom Davenport, a Distinguished Professor in Management and Information Technology at Babson College and author of 19 books on management practices and analytics, thinks about technology in terms of what it means for humans. At the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Vertica Big Data Conference this week, he joined theCUBE’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante and talked about Big Data and social behavior. He offered some interesting examples and insights as to how Big Data affects social behaviors today, and how analytics could be used in the future.

The Present

Davenport offered examples of two companies making efficient use of Big Data: Monsanto and Google.

Historically a seed and pesticide company, Monsanto now sells data to farmers in order to help them figure out information on exactly what to plant, when to plant and when the pesticide needs to be applied. The company even paid a billion dollars for a field level climate data company so it can make better recommendations. Although the farmers pretty much have to buy back their own data, Monsanto uses analytics and insights to add value to the content. So far, farmers have shown they’re willing to pay for the service.

At Google, the company’s venture capital arm started using data to articulate which past investments have paid off, as well as identifying the successful attributes for those investments.

“I think these more analytical strategies will end up driving out the ones that are based on intuition and gut-feel,” added Davenport.

The Future

Davenport’s insight on what the future holds in terms of Big Data presented both bleak and positive points of view.

He said that it’s going to be a tough decade because hackers are, unfortunately, “making faster progress than the people who are protecting us from them.”

“I always focused on… the up side of analytics, but I think preventing the down side is going to become a really important issue,” Davenport added.

On a more positive note, with many knowledge-based jobs becoming more automated, Davenport is working on figuring out how humans can make sure that analytics and other systems augment jobs rather than automate them. He used The Associated Press as an example of this as the organization’s business reporting is now being done by an automated news story decision engine.

However, Davenport believes that humans can still play an important role and even improve work efficiency. “We can be even more productive and effective than we would be otherwise if we make friends with our computers as opposed to sort of submitting to our new masters,” said Davenport.

See his entire segment below:

photo credit: Keoni Cabral via photopin cc