Editor’s Choices for Week Ending Jul 6, 2012

Article of the Week
The next generation business: Data is the new platform (GigaOm)
Big Idea: When thinking about the value of the data a company collects vs. the traditional value of the product it may produce, collecting and analyzing broad categories of customer + product data is becoming equally — if not more — valuable than the product itself.

Editor’s Choice Articles
The Chicago Startup That Changed How Orbitz, Gap, and Obama Collect Your Data (FastCompany)
Big Idea: Startup BrightTag says it’s found a way to overhaul the creeky cobbled-together system of tag-based data mining while giving businesses ownership of the information they glean from site visitors.  The article provides a good description of how tags are used as marketing tools and the approach BrightTag is taking.

Courting Better Health: Time to Focus on Health Analytics (SAS Blogs)
Big Idea: All eyes were on the Supreme Court’s ruling this past week, and there’s an Analytics spin regardless of your opinion of the Court’s decision.  The decision removes some of the uncertainty from the Affordable Care Act and Analytics can play a role in determining how the law will be implemented.

For ZestFinance, big data comes with big responsibility  (GigaOm)
Big Idea: Interesting case study on ZestFinance, a startup that provides short-term loans to the underserved, including an overview of their big data credit-scoring algorithm.

Harnessing Collective Intelligence in Decision Making through Big Data Analytics (SmartData Collective)
Big Idea:  A good review of big data concepts, including sources and characteristics of big data and some of the vendor platforms being utilized in today’s solutions.