In his recently published book, Think Bigger: Developing a Successful Big Data Strategy for Your Business, Mark van Rijmenam asserts that executives need to know what the most important aspects of Big Data are that their organizations should be aware of when developing a Big Data strategy. [I presume to suggest that those involved keep this observation by Michael Porter in mind: “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”] “Big Data does require a paradigm shift, and knowing these realities will help your organization move forward.” They are so important that Van Rijmenam discusses them briefly in Chapter 2 and then more thoroughly in subsequent chapters.

Here are eight Big Data realities:

1. Big Data requires a different culture. “To truly take advantage of Big Data, your organization needs to become an information-centric company. The culture shift will result in more data-driven decisions and will give your employees the opportunity to develop new operational, tactical, and strategic plans based on real dated instead of calculated estimates.”

2. The real driver behind Big Data is the people within the organization. “Although a cultural shift is important to take full advantage of all the possibilities of Big Data, development of a Big Data strategy comes from the people in the organization. In particular, managers and executives should be aware of what Big Data is and how it can be applied to their organization.”

3. Big Data is everywhere, even at places you do not expect. “Everything digital is data. More and more items are digitized and connected to the Internet. This means your organization is receiving new data from completely new areas.”

4. Big Data engineers will be scarce, so you better start looking around. “McKinsey predicts a shortage of about 140,000 to 190,000 Big Data engineers in the United States alone in 2018.” [To learn more, please click here.]

5. Big Data does require big security measures. “Organizations that gather large valuable datasets need to protect that information from criminals whose goal is to steal the data and use it to their advantage…Ever y organization should, however, also have a crisis plan ready just in case it is hacked.”

6. A public debate about privacy issues is inevitable. “Slowly, consumers are becoming aware of the amount of data that organizations are collecting about them on a daily basis. They are learning that companies often store the data for a long time, often two years or longer, and that they can sell the data if they want.”

7. Governments all over the world are increasing their Big Data efforts. “As with organizations, governments are also generating more and more data. Many governments are becoming digital…As a result of these initiatives, public datasets are becoming more widely available for organizations, and that drives innovation and new solutions for problems worldwide.”

8. Big Data is not all about the amount of data. This is a key point. True, the larger the organization, the more data it can probably obtain. However, contrary to popular opinion, all organizations — whatever their size and nature may be–can derive substantial benefit from Big Data. As van Rijmenam explains, “Big Data is much more than just the volume of data collected. Big Data is about combining different datasets in different variances at different moments from different sources. In particular, it is the combining and subsequent analyzing of different datasets that will provide new and valuable insights. This means that a Big Data strategy is also possible for small and medium enterprises…Don’t be intimidated by companies that have massive amounts of data. Although more data does mean better insights, it does not necessarily mean more insights.”

Think Bigger was published by AMACOM (April 2014).

Mark van Rijmenam is founder of the online big data knowledge platform BigData-Startups.com, which aims to become the central point of big data on the web. BigData-Startups.com a platform with trends, best practices, information, open source tools and big data startups for organizations developing a big data strategy. The objective of the platform is to help organizations develop a big data strategy and to find the right big data technology vendor for that strategy. The platform attracts an important niche of consumers, job seekers, organizations and governments interested in big data. He lives in The Hague, Netherlands. To learn more about him and his work, please click here.