Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.

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Up to 85% of big data projects fail, often because executives don’t accurately assess the project risks at the outset. Before investing in your next big data initiative, ask these four questions to determine its chances of success.

o First: Is your data valuable and rare? Not all available data is useful, nor is it unique or exclusive.

o Second: Can employees use the data to create solutions on their own? You need to decentralize decision-making in order to encourage people to autonomously initiate, create, and adapt solutions.

o Third: Can your technology actually deliver the solution? You can have all the data and ideas in the world, but if your technology can only deliver a prototype or a non-scalable solution, your project will fail.

o And finally: Is your solution compliant with laws and ethics? Even if it’s legal, if users find your solution to be “creepy,” the project is doomed from the start.

This tip is adapted from “Use This Framework to Predict the Success of Your Big Data Project,” by Carsten Lund Pedersen and Thomas Ritter

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Here’s a direct link to dozens of other Management Tips.