by Angela Guess
Paul Gillin recently wrote in Business2Community, “In a business world seemingly gone mad for Big Data, it’s worth remembering that our scramble for better trend lines and demographic profiles shouldn’t prevent us from overlooking the little stuff. ‘The corporate world has become completely blinded by Big Data,’ said branding Expert Martin Lindstrom in a recent interview with Knowledge@Wharton. He has reason to be cynical. For his new book, Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends, Lindstrom visited the homes of 2,000 families in more than 75 countries to observe how people live and how their lifestyles affect their attitudes and preferences.”
Gillin continues, “He asserts that our fixation on big numbers distracts us from the insights that human interactions reveal about human desires and motivations. Essentially, Big Data tells us how people behave, but not what they want. It’s useful for refining what we already do, but not for generating new insights. ‘“If you take the top 100 biggest innovations of our time, perhaps 60% to 65% were really based on small data,’ Lindstrom said. Like Swiffer. Procter & Gamble’s cleaning innovation was the result of a research project to invent not a better mop, but a better cleaning agent.”
He goes on, “Researchers at Continuum, an innovation agency P&G engaged for the project, spent hundreds of hours watching people mop floors without results. It was a single incident that got the innovation wheels turning. A Continuum research spilled coffee grounds on the floor, then watched as their elderly test subject reached not for a mop but with a broom and damp paper towel. That single interaction yielded more insight about a consumer need than terabytes of data. Swiffer today generates $500 million in annual sales, and P&G dominates the market.”
Photo credit: JessicaSarahS