Why this Infographic on Data is Astounding, Terrifying, and Revolutionary (for those who can handle it)

This past week, Mashable ran a very illuminating article simply entitled; How Much Data is Created Every Minute. Actually, it was more a few sentences to set up this incredibly well done infographic, created  by domo.com, on data creation that you see below. This was a blunt force, effective way to simply say “Look at all of this data!!!” and 7.2K shares later on Mashable, clearly it worked. We thought picking up on the article and pushing this conversation deeper was a worthy endeavor. It is incredible to visualize the data in this minute by minute manner, but stopping there is tantamount to reading; “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” and putting down the Dickens classic. Spend at least a little time delving into this exceptionally done graphic and then join us as we dive deeper and discuss why it all matters and why, it’s actually just the beginning.

This Data is Astounding and Only Half the Picture

First and foremost, this graphic makes you go “wow!”. And though we know that Big Data – and creating value from all of this data – isn’t just a volume discussion, sometimes you can’t help but be blown back by the volume of activity.

And let’s not forget, this infograhic ONLY covers actively generated data. What does that mean? Sensors that are making their way into mobile devices, clothing, our cars and even our bodies are beginning to track scores of passive data as well. This is data you or I didn’t have to do anything “extra” to generate. A great example of this might be your heart rate being monitored by an article of clothing via an embedded device. When you start to add the coming wave of passive data to the usual suspects of user-generated data  - a LIKE, a new YouTube post, an Instagram photo – these overall numbers are set to explode even further and even faster.

The question you must ask your team is:

Do we understand what data is important and what we want to measure?

This Big Data is Terrifying

Five years ago it was becoming evident that your enterprise ought to take social very seriously. Companies that traditionally concentrated little on marketing were wading their way through social, trying to find out what types of social messaging was actually effective for them. It was uncharted territory for enterprises across the globe. And though you cannot at all short-sell the importance of being an effective social enterprise, many companies were able to figure out and capitalize on social through select hiring, crafty marketing agencies, and scores of trial and error.

This time it’s different. This time it’s about the data. It’s about algorithms, machine learning, sensor technologies, data visualization and beyond and there is a sincere shortage of global talent who can create value in this era of Big Data.

The question you must ask your team is:

Do we have a plan to access this hyper-specialized talent to create value from it all?

This Data is Revolutionary

Two quick and almost exponentially opposite stories showcase just how powerful all of this neo-data creation is.

In 2024, IBM plans on launching a telescope that will gather more information per day than exists on the entire current Internet. The data generated and analyzed will most likely get humans closer to unlocking the secrets of the Universe.

A more down to Earth story, concentrating on a human’s “inner space” comes to us from the Atlantic, featuring Professor Larry Smarr and his quest to chart and track his every bodily function. Take the time and read this incredible piece as it hones in on what all this data tracking helps to accomplish. What it boils down to is illumination. Where there was darkness, guessing, and speculation, data will bring light and understanding. But getting to a point where the average individual experiences data as Larry Smarr experiences data, that will take tremendous experimentation and risk taking.

The honest question you must ask your team is:

Do we have a way to continuously experiment and innovate with data while keeping risk to a minimum?

These are the big questions in Big Data:

Do you know what you want to measure, solve, or understand?

Do you have the talent to create value from Big Data?

Are you able to experiment and innovate at greatly reduced risk?

Why Atomization is the Key to Success in Open Innovation

At TopCoder, we like to break things down. No, we don’t mean spontaneous dance-offs in the halls of our Glastonbury, CT headquarters, but rather we are referring to the atomization of the work before our community of more than 412,000 developers, algorithmists, and digital design creatives. We break down projects, some small, some medium-sized, and some rather complex and quite large-scale projects, into the elements of atomized work and innovation that must be accomplished to create a very successful whole. In fact, the very process to atomize the work itself is most often accomplished via a specific competition where the output is the atomized road-map forward. After successfully atomizing the work, we then host highly specific competitions to create the parts and through our community, powered by competition, we create best in breed atomized assets throughout the entire production life-cycle. And yes, if you were wondering how we put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, that too is a specialized competition we call Assembly. Then the asset can be tested and even de-bugged, all through, you guessed it, specialized competitions.

It’s good to understand that TopCoder creates assets through this highly structured and purposefully rigorous process. What is more powerful to understand is why we do it this way. Last September we released a popular blog post that discussed the 6 Important Ways Crowdsourcing is Different than Outsourcing. This linked article is a good start, but it’s time to move this discussion forward. 

Now, as Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation models evolve further, another distinction must be drawn. There is a fundamental difference between utilizing an Open Innovation challenge for a one off contest, even if it’s a large-scale “Grand Challenge” vs. having a defined, repeatable process in place to continuously innovate via an Open Innovation platform. At TopCoder we call the latter EOI or Enterprise Open Innovation and at the heart of the ability to continuously innovate is the fact that we utilize atomization to the utmost.

Join TopCoder on Tuesday, July 10th for this free webinar: Achieving the Complex in Open Innovation: Why Atomization is the Key to Success - Space is limited. Register Now.

Join this discussion as we canvass:

• The differences between EOI v. Moonshot Open Innovation
• The 7 Benefits of Atomization in Open Innovation
• 2 Client Case Studies – one from an enterprise client, one from a government client – both exceptionally complex, large-scale projects

Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing are turning a page for the better. Enjoying a process that legitimately scales is the only way to shift mentality within an enterprise. This isn’t about hosting an open competition to boost your marketing and brand. This is about productivity and everyday innovation. And at TopCoder this is possible, at least partly, because of atomization. Register for the webinar, and experience why.

3 Reasons Open Innovation Delivers Amazing Algorithms ?

Algorithms, you can’t see them, touch them, or if you cared to, taste them, but you know they are everywhere. Algorithms are the O2 of the technology blood stream. Without them, networks die, information ceases to exchange, and the pace of innovation slows to a crawl. Algorithms are what make your favorite apps so personalized and what deliver exceedingly larger sets of Big Data to clouds to speed up computational decisions that have legitimate impacts on humanity. Even companies who traditionally wouldn’t consider themselves a “data company” are increasingly spending time and resources to prep data, mine data, understand data and pair otherwise non-related data sets in the hopes of mashing-up a solution that pays dividends for their enterprise. All of this data work is driven by sophisticated algorithms. So the question that matters to your enterprise is: How do you approach algorithmic innovation? Here are 3 compelling reasons you should consider an Open Innovation approach to tackle your biggest algorithmic challenges.

Not Just Success – Extreme, Repeatable Successes

Open Innovation, especially EOI (Enterprise Open Innovation), takes that raw power that is promised by Crowdsourcing and applies process. This process equates to gaining scale and this means you can have repeatable, and even predictable success in algorithmic innovation and advancement via Open Innovation. Why is this the case? Well, let’s get back to the core of Open Innovation. Two powerful factors converge inside an Open Innovation community such as TopCoder; they are competition and collaboration.

TopCoder Algorithm challenges often take place in the shape of what we call our Marathon Matches. These are long form challenges dealing with highly complex and sophisticated work, typically spanning 2 weeks in competition time. Our Marathon Matches attract hundreds of registrants and competitors and when you have that many solid algorithmists focused on a problem and bringing their unique experiences and perspective to their submission(s), the results are staggering.

Remember in a competitive Open Innovation community, you the end-user of the output, are after one thing, a truly valuable outcome. Repeatable, rigorous, standards-based algorithm challenges hosted on a mature Open Innovation platform, powered by a global community of solvers is the most predictable way to attain extreme, repeatable successes.

Need for Speed, Two-Ways

Fans of the culinary viewing delights Iron Chef, Top Chef, or even Chopped – all based on competition we should add –  will know the term “Two-Ways” straight away. It’s the same main element, let’s say Duck,  served two unique ways within a singular plating. Here, we are talking about a double dose of what Maverick & Goose were continually chasing in the iconic ’80s flick Top Gun. We are of course referring to the need, the need for speed.

The first “speed” benefit is the obvious one. At TopCoder, as mentioned above, we host Marathon Matches that create stellar algorithmic solutions and typically they take place in or under a two week time frame. This is revolutionary in the arena of sophisticated algorithms.  As an example, for a Harvard Medical School competition focused on DNA sequencing alignment, the TopCoder winning solutions were delivered in 2 weeks time. The existing gold standard that was in-use was developed by a Full-Time resource, working on the problem for a full year. The TopCoder solution was delivered 96.2% faster than a traditional avenue could produce. But how did the algorithm perform? That is the second “speed” we are about to discus. 

Whether we point to the growth and fragmentation of mobile & tablet or the shift caused by all things “social”, we talk about a hyper-paced technology environment quite often. When we discuss “pace”, there is no greater factor than that of neo-data creation. In fact, we just canvassed this very topic in a recent blog – Why this infographic on data is astounding, terrifying, and revolutionary – and the simple truth is that data creation is greatly outpacing the ability to handle the data effectively, and the pace is accelerating!

In the Harvard Medical School example above; where the existing gold standard solution was able to calculate an accurate edit distance between a Query DNA string and the original DNA string in 400 seconds, TopCoder’s solution was able to do the same – at an improved level of accuracy – in only 12 seconds.

Experiment Like Mad (Scientists)

James Kobielus, Senior Program Director, Product Marketing, Big Data Analytics at IBM, recently penned a fantastic article canvassing the need to continuously and incrementally innovate in the era of Big Data. Granted, the above examples we just showcased are not incremental innovations, they are, big and staggering improvements over existing gold standard solutions. But James’ article has many stellar points, this being one of them:

“If we can make our  business model a tad smarter – in other words, more speedy, responsive, efficient, or flexible - we can differentiate where it counts. And if we can keep fresh innovations coming - week after week, quarter after quarter - we can make our competitive advantage durable over the long term. In so doing, we can shift the competitive playing field in our favor through process innovations that competitors can’t easily match.”

James goes on to say that the key to these advancements is experimentation in data science, and again, his point is spot on. But how does your organization hope to continuously innovate in Big Data? To experiment like mad scientists in a traditional business environment, you need incredible resources, not to mention the pure man-power who can handle this highly specialized work. Fact is most have neither, very few have both. So what do you do?

You access platforms, you tap into global communities, and you run your data experiments – just as James is suggesting – but you do it through Open Innovation, powered by competitions. We discussed above the why, (Extreme value outcomes, speed two-ways), now it’s about how you execute.

To create value from advanced algorithms, you need faster, smarter solutions, delivered quicker on a scalable platform that allows you to experiment. Enterprise Open Innovation (EOI) is proving to be a remarkable way to do just that.

The 3 Do’s For You in Managing Open Innovation Challenges ?

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We’ve all heard the adage, “There’s no I in team.” and we understand what that statement means. You can’t get there alone and everything is truly a team effort. As true as truisms get, there is good reason we’ve been hearing this since we were kids. Furthermore, this saying carries over quite nicely into this new era of global platforms and communities such as TopCoder that are helping enterprises accelerate innovation and boost productivity via Open Innovation practices.

Accessing specialized talent via open challenges and competitions only bolsters the point further that in today’s business environment, you just can’t go it alone. With all this said, there is a misnomer regarding the level of participation and management techniques required to get the very most out of an Open Innovation engagement. There may be no I in team, but there is most definitely an I in Open Innovation, and it’s you.

We discussed in a recent blog post 3 Tips On Communicating with an Open Innovation Community and we suggest you read that article as a nice base for the following Do’s of managing challenges, competitions, and an entire Open Innovation strategy.

The 3 Do’s For You in Open Innovation

There are 3 key “Do’s” to master when it comes to effectively managing Open Innovation challenges and projects, they are:

In Community YOU Trust

This is a macro “do” within management of individual Open Innovation challenges. Whether you call your knowledge and innovation source a community, a crowd, your fan-base, or something in between, it is of huge importance that you trust this source.

At TopCoder, trust is earned. It’s not a fluffy feel-good euphoria, but rather a metric driven predictability that bolsters your trust in community. Of course, trust is also formed over time by consistent performance from the members who comprise your community.

If you can’t trust your source and your platform to deliver you results, then you will struggle letting go and your productivity will suffer greatly.

Learn to Let Go

Once trust is established, it’s time to learn to let go. This does not mean you do nothing, but this does mean you do things wildly differently. You are not meant to dive into the mosh-pit of Open Innovation, meaning you are not someone producing the work, or the code, or the solution, but rather you must purposefully step outside the sphere where the actual work is getting done and concentrate on the factors that help the community perform. Instead of being the solver, you must be the great facilitator. Concentrate on communicating exceptionally, providing the community access to any data and expertise they will need, and beyond. Do these things remarkably well, trust your community and let go of what you traditionally viewed as your work.

7 Reasons Innovation via Community and Atomization Works ?

In this era of the social sound-bite, words are not as carefully chosen as they perhaps once were. This leads to platitudes over realities, and phrase overuse clogging up messaging making it difficult to discern what a particular service or offering can actually help you accomplish. We see terms such as Open Innovation, community, Big Data, and platform bandied about and because of this, the terms themselves tend to get watered down. They mean less because they’re overused, a “vernaculary inflation” of sorts. So, it becomes that much more important to communicate effectively why at TopCoder, we do use these terms.

TopCoder is a global community of over 414,000 software developers, algorithmists and digital designers. Our community is accessed through a mature platform that enables our enterprise clients to achieve tremendous scale and innovation via open and secured competitions and contests. These words mean something, because they are exactly who we are and how our community operates. Another aspect that is important to understand is the why. Why does leveraging a community work? Why do we break down projects into atomized states and then host specific, smaller competitions? With this in mind, we created the 7 reasons innovation via community and atomization works.

Hunting Digital Bugs by Putting Community Nit-Picking to Work ?

Hunting Bugs and the Power of Cognitive Surplus

At TopCoder we have a specialized contest dubbed Bug Hunts or in the singular form, a Bug Hunt. Like everything else at TopCoder, hunting bugs is also a contest. Competitors will dive deep into an architecture, a design user-interface, or a piece of functioning software and create a list of flaws they believe they have spotted. They have a set contest time frame to submit as many flaws as they believe they have uncovered. Reviewers then confirm if an actual flaw does exist and then credit the appropriate competitor – the one who submitted the flaw first – with the Bug Hunt victory. We utilize them – Bug Hunts –  to help correct design UI flaws, traditional software bugs and beyond. Bug Hunts represent an incredibly efficient way to tackle a persistent issue in the digital world and by utilizing a contest format, the client gains much greater control with regards to time and budget spent searching for and identifying flaws. For our community members, some just have a knack for this sort of work and we’re glad to offer them the opportunity to put that skill-set to great use over and over again.

Repurposing Bug Hunts to Achieve Compliance in Design

For the CMS project discussed earlier, the idea behind Bug Hunts has been shaped to serve an entirely new purpose. A major challenge when creating digital assets for a government client is ensuring compliance with requirements, standards, legislation and regulations. Non-compliant design, architecture, user interfaces and more can cause major delays in production and can ultimately result in a lot more severe consequences than just a delay.

To help ensure compliant design, TopCoder is repurposing Bug Hunts in a brand new fashion. TopCoder community members are being asked to feverishly comb through various winning design submissions to spot flaws that would have triggered a compliance violation. Community members will be paid for each confirmed flaw discovered and the competitor who finds the very most flaws will win the overall contest and take home the largest prize money reward.

Providing fun, short-term opportunities to our community in this way simply means many more eyes are on the hunt, working in a massively parallel fashion to locate existing flaws. In layman’s terms, this takes the art of nit-picking, which some individuals are quite good at, and wraps it in competition format, opening it up so many can contribute. Identifying design flaws at this early stage will save time and more importantly, will help ensure the very best, most compliant design moves forward and is utilized in the final outputs.

When you are working with a competitive and collaborative community, such as TopCoder, you can attack old challenges in brand new ways. We hope this innovative method to help ensure compliant design is a huge success for this CMS project and we promise to keep you posted as this 8 to 9 month long project rolls on.

How Technology, Crowdsourcing, and You Will Power the Individual Economy ?

It’s 2014 and you are walking down a crowded London street, searching for a small restaurant known for their bangers and mash. Your Google Goggles guide you as you make your final left and then duck into the the antiquated eatery and take in the scents that prompted your friends to socially tag this little known spot as a “must hit”. As you sit down into chairs built for a previous generation, you look up and notice a small, but wonderful painting. You snag a photo (via a voice command or eye gesture) through your Google eye-wear, add a positive caption and in a patterned blink, share the painting to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, G+, Pinterest … and one more, and very interesting place, Zaarly.

Within minutes of your share you see the comments rolling in from friends who didn’t even realize you were in London and commenting on the odd little picture of a picture you took. But beyond these social comments, you also begin to receive market notifications from painters who live close by your apartment back in Eugene, Oregon. These painters, via the Zaarly marketplace, are able to share with you, through a thoughtful and seamless UI, their portfolio, their community or marketplace ratings like reliability and client satisfaction rankings, and their pricing for various size paintings they are offering you. Keep in mind the painters aren’t offering you an existing work from their gallery (though of course they could), but rather they are offering you a brand new painting based on the image you provided.

You are attracted to a certain artist’s style and find her pricing right in the range you are willing to pay for a unique piece of artwork. You request a phone call, which she obliges and after the short discussion is over, you’ve agreed to purchase a painting. The application requests for you to approve the transfer of funds which you OK, and as the approval commences, the artist brings the first stroke of alizarin crimson to canvas. By the time you get home from London in 42 hours, she’ll be meeting you at the corner Starbucks, with your brand new painting.

This above is the individual economy. Powered by technology, crowdsourcing talent, and you, this transaction represents a bold new way forward for all participants.

Zaarly Anywhere API and the March to Hyperspecialization

Yesterday, as reported on GigaOm and other outlets, Zaarly released their “Zaarly Anywhere” API and by doing so set off in motion what you just read above, or at least something like it. Zaarly, for those who don’t know, is a user friendly market-place to source specialized talent or experience. Perhaps you need a housekeeper or a cross-fit trainer, or a gluten-free chef who can help you craft a new dietary regimen. Whatever the need, Zaarly can seemingly help you source the individual who can best help.. This crowdsourcing of individual skill-sets isn’t new at this point, but Zaarly’s intuitive applications have earned special praise. And now, with the release of “Zaarly Anywhere”, it really opens up the possibilities for how this market place will function and be tapped.

Please note, the current API doesn’t go nearly as far as what was suggested in the leading paragraphs. The API instead allows people to browse the web, to browse fun sites that offer DIY solutions & hacks and to then bring that idea to the Zaarly marketplace to find out how much it would cost to have someone, with the specialized skill, bring it to life for them. A neat example is how IKEA will be using the Zaarly Anywhere API. IKEA has a niche site, catering to the DIY community that showcases how individuals have hacked their products and created brand new products and user experiences out of these innovative hacks. First, kudos to IKEA for having the forethought to not only encourage the hacks, but then to provide a branded site around the hacks to showcase the work back to IKEA fans. It’s plain smart and deserves a tip of the cap. While perusing these fun hacks, it’s safe to assume that the vast majority of individuals couldn’t actually do it themselves, and that’s where the Zaarly Anywhere API comes in. You see something you like but can’t get done without help, you click a button and the Zaarly community is alerted to this new job or task. It takes the idea of crowdsourcing tasks (like securing a landscaper or hiring someone to stand in line for you at the DMV) and pushes it much further and faster towards sourcing individuals with specialized skill-sets.

Pressing the Technology Fast Forward Button

As niche evolves to next and Google Goggles become something we don’t just see Sergey Brin wearing to premieres, then it’s logical to conclude this type of API, that taps the always-on marketplace of individual skill, will start to include the physical world, not just the digital. A back to the future renaissance will occur where the digitization of the physical realm – via augmented reality applications and hardware advances – will allow humans to play with their non-digital surroundings like never before.

More sharing and better data and data sharing applications will lead to a boom in this individual economy. Companies like IKEA who clearly understand the path will flourish, while other stalwarts of the physical today may not pivot quite so elegantly and just might face hard times ahead.

Finally,  there is a great reason Wall Street is supposedly pressuring Facebook to launch a “want” button to supplant or bolster the current LIKE button to drive new transactions through the Goliath network. But the question has to be asked, did Zaarly just release a better LIKE? And, because of their growing community and clear shift towards ever more specialized skills within their crowd, are they better positioned going forward to drive this new social economy?

What are your thoughts? Share them in the comments below or on Twitter @TopCoder.

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