IntoTheMinds consulting blog
Advice in Data & IT
How I got in the TOP10 of Linkedin’s most viewed profiles
Aug10

How I got in the TOP10 of Linkedin’s most viewed profiles

8 weeks ago I started an experiment. I wanted to jump into the TOP10 most viewed profiles of my Linkedin network. I succeeded. Read further if you want to find out how I achieved jumping from the 100th place to the 10th and what it brought me. Short intro : what does my Linkedin network look like My Linkedin network is made of approximately 1980 connections. I removed very few of them along the years, basically...

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French Universities scandalous selection algorithm revealed
Jul06

French Universities scandalous selection algorithm revealed

Big Data technologies and in particular selection algorithms attract more and more criticism from libertarian advocates. I echoed growing concerns myself in an article calling for more transparent algorithms. French newspaper Liberation revealed that National Education ministry faces legal pressure to give access to the code behind the APB algorithm. The latter is used by universities to select freshmen. The variables used by this algorithm remained secret until a student association, helped by lawyer Jean Merlet-Bonnan,...

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Data Scientists are NOT the solution
Jun08

Data Scientists are NOT the solution

In a recent meeting with Big Data managers in the broadcasting industry, one complaint came over and over again. Data scientists have no feeling for business, and business people even less for statistics and Big Data. How to bridge the gap was the central question. Correlation doesn’t mean causation The lack of business understanding is especially visible when it comes to building predictive models. Too often data scientists will only look for correlations without checking that...

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Big Data can save lives
Jun06

Big Data can save lives

At the conference organized together by Microsoft Europe and Louvain University, Adeline Decuyper proposed a fresh look at Big Data. She rightly made the point that Big Data can also serve non commercial purposes and contribute to Greater Good. She gave some amazing examples of how cell phone data can be used in a variety of settings to improve the lives of millions of people and even save lives. Big Data applied to mobility issues She...

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Big Data : what are the trends in the retail and insurance sectors ?
May25

Big Data : what are the trends in the retail and insurance sectors ?

In partnership with Microsoft Europe (Brussels), the University of Louvain (Belgium) organized a conference on 13 May where I discussed the future impact of Big Data in the retail and insurance sectors. I started by outlining the 4 sectors that are heavy data producers and users : banking, insurance, retail and telecom. I showed that Big Data is used for only two purposes in these sectors : reduce costs or generate revenues. I then moved on...

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The Financial Times found the most perfect KPI’s to measure success
May11

The Financial Times found the most perfect KPI’s to measure success

The success of any marketing action needs to be measured with the right KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators). The Financial Times found a unique KPI that allows outstanding predictions of their churn rate. Read further to learn more. KPI’s are difficult to set The very definition of those KPI’s is a crucial part of any project. If you take the wrong KPI’s you’ll get a biased perspective on what you are doing. If you chose the right...

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Will banks sell your data to retailers?
Apr20

Will banks sell your data to retailers?

Your bank knows a lot about you and, as a matter of fact, the banking sector has been investing huge amount in Big Data for years. Similarly retailers know also a lot about you through the purchases you make. Is the next step a merger of data from both world to enhance behavior predictability ? This is the subject of an article on Visionary Marketing. However, unlike you may think, the idea of using banking data...

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Insurances : towards the end of the risk sharing principle ?
Apr18

Insurances : towards the end of the risk sharing principle ?

There is one very important underlying principle of any insurance : risk sharing. Good drivers cover a part of the risk of bad drivers; people in good health pay for those who fall ill. Americans call this a “socialist” way of doing business. But until now insurances in Europe have always favored a group approach vs. an individualistic one. The data revolution may be the end of this. Here’s why. Customer data will enable user-centric approach...

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Mobile Me : your car has no secrets for Mercedes
Apr11

Mobile Me : your car has no secrets for Mercedes

Nowadays cars can be connected with your smartphone ; not only to make calls but also to control your car at distance. The Mercedes Me application enables the owner to monitor basic and more advanced functionalities of the vehicle through his smartphone. The presence of a SIM card transmitting the information to the smartphone is the enabler of this enhanced connectivity ; but it may also enable Mercedes to become a data provider. Your car has...

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Service quality : the next retail challenge after Big Data
Apr08

Service quality : the next retail challenge after Big Data

Algorithms have become instrumental in retailers’ strategies to increase loyalty among customers. We don’t know of any major retailer not having a Big Data team working on a.o. predicting churn, couponning, increasing loyalty, new segmentation, … Yet, what we also notice is that all retailers more or less all use the same tools, the same techniques for the same goals. It’s all about Spark, Hadoop, real-time processing and it’s true that technological progresses will certainly represent...

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Are smart boxes the future of car insurance?
Mar25

Are smart boxes the future of car insurance?

Telematic units, also called black or smart boxes, are devices installed in a car to monitor a driver’s behavior (speed, acceleration, deceleration, …). They are increasingly used by insurance companies to develop a pay-as-you-drive pricing. Such pricing may be especially interesting for young drivers who are hit by high insurance premiums. Young drivers are victims of their youth One metric sums it up all: 25% of accidents are caused by young drivers. This is quite a...

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Big Data : 4 points to understand your legal responsibilities
Mar09

Big Data : 4 points to understand your legal responsibilities

I recently attended a workshop on the legal aspects of Big Data and IoT (Internet of Things) that was organized by Impulse in Brussels. The presenter, Philippe Laurent, had a very clever and clear way of presenting the problems posed by Big Data and I thought it might be interesting to share his presentation and conclusions with you. In particular he proposed a 4-category framework that is easy to understand and will give you essential guidance...

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Techstartupday 2016 : virtual reality on the rise
Feb28

Techstartupday 2016 : virtual reality on the rise

At the techstartup day 2016 that took place in Brussels last week, one of the buzzwords was virtual reality (VR). Juan Bossicard, Cluster manager at Impulse and President of the Microsoft Innovation Center, held a very interesting speech on the opportunities offered by VR in various industries. What I loved about Juan’s speech was the perspective it gave to Virtual Reality and its link with digitalization. Juan’s argument was that despite digitalization a frontier still remains...

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Real-estate prices predicted : latest news of startup Realo
Feb26

Real-estate prices predicted : latest news of startup Realo

Last year we reported on the scandal that followed the launch of Realo, a website predicting real-estate prices. A Belgian initiative, Realo has European ambitions and is based on a business model that has proved its efficacy in the US : Zillow.com The scandal was due to the nature of the data used in the algorithm to predict prices : unemployment rate, multiculturality, education levels, … Although all data used was public (and provided for free...

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Algorithms : is our freedom threatened?
Feb22

Algorithms : is our freedom threatened?

If you follow the news you may have come across this news : a deep-learning algorithm has defeated the European master of Go. This news was such a milestone in artificial intelligence (AI) that it was featured in the Nature issue on 28 Jan 2016. Big Data scientists believed indeed it would take another 10 years for a computer to beat a human player at Go. The least we can say is that it went much...

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Facebook case: towards more Big Data transparency ?
Feb12

Facebook case: towards more Big Data transparency ?

No later than Monday we were announcing the next Big Data revolution : algorithms will become more transparent in the future. We argued consumers will become increasingly aware of how sensitive their data is, eventually demanding information on how it is used and Big Data transparency. On Monday evening (08 Feb 2016) the French data protection authority (CNIL) together with the fraud authorities (DGCCRF) confirmed that trend. They listed a series of infringements and demanded that...

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Big Data : here’s the next revolution
Feb08

Big Data : here’s the next revolution

This is the beginning of the next Big Data revolution. However it remained confidential. A bill was passed in France mid-January that will force the fiscal authorities to reveal the variables in algorithms used to take individual decisions (article in French). In other words, if you are picked up to get your tax declarations scrutinized, the fiscal authorities will have to reveal how you were picked up. Big Data: when ethics comes into play Until now...

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Good resolution #1: be more selective
Jan15

Good resolution #1: be more selective

In April 2015 I started a new Big Data assignment in Brussels. I was (and still am) spending most of my time in the eastern part of Brussels. I then realized I was working not far away from a former colleague of mine whom I used to work with when I was still at Volkswagen. It was more than 10 years I hadn’t seen him and I told to myself it would be great to meet...

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On the importance of data obsolescence
Jan11

On the importance of data obsolescence

Short before Christmas I decided to send a few emails to re-connect with some of my fellow colleagues, acquaintances and clients of the past. I also used that occasion to ask those contacts one particular question for a market research we were conducting in Belgium for a telecom operator. We were having difficulties recruiting respondents for face-to-face interviews and in those cases I use to leverage my network to speed up the recruiting phase of the project....

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Big Data becomes Art at MoMa
Nov16

Big Data becomes Art at MoMa

Visualizing and making sense of big data is in itself a difficult exercise. Successful attempts have been reported on this blog (for instance Jacques Levy’s geographical maps). Visualization can sometimes be so stunning that it can become a piece of Art. Columbia researchers Laura Kurgan, Eric Cadora, David Reinfurt and Sarah Williams processed data from the US department of Justice and reveal visually some stunning results about incarcerated people. Presentation of the research project In a...

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Big Data: why couldn’t you sell your data?
Oct21

Big Data: why couldn’t you sell your data?

This may seem like a silly idea but here it is. Wouldn’t it be better to pay users for their data rather than stealing it from them and discussing issues of data quality afterwards? (see our other articles on Big Data here) Disruptive business model needed in Big Data Big Data and Data Mining have been operated rather homogenously since the beginning. It consists in either “stealing” data from the consumer (data captation at every touchpoint)...

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What is the future of radio?
Oct12

What is the future of radio?

The hope we were having a few years ago that younger listeners on the internet would move back to so-called linear consumption, is gone (see our latest article on radio consumption habits). We are currently in a period of transition, as the CEO if the BBC pointed out in a recent speech, and we don’t know where we are heading to. This is a context of maximal uncertainty for the future of radio.   Skipping tracks...

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How radio consumption is changing among younger generations
Oct07

How radio consumption is changing among younger generations

I recently gave a speech on Big Data and Data Mining at the Radio Days of the EBU in Riga (Latvia) and met other fellow marketers and head of European broadcasters from all over Europe. There are two big lessons learned that I want to share with you : Radio consumption has been stable for more than a decade, whatever the country Usages are shifting among new generations (Y and Z) Statistics on radio consumptions across...

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Facebook new patent for credit rating through social networks
Sep08

Facebook new patent for credit rating through social networks

Have you heard about Facebook’s new patent to evaluate your credit rating based on your social network ? Everyone refers to it but despite all my efforts I’ve been unable to find a new such patent application filled in by Facebook in the US Patent and Trademark Office database. How curious … Yet, many articles refer to an official document. My guess is that few journalist have actually taken the time to read what they referred to....

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5 trends that threaten old broadcasters
May13

5 trends that threaten old broadcasters

Old-fashion medias have never been more threatened than today by new consumers’ behaviors. Television channels are certainly in the middle of the storm and must quickly adapt to consumers aged under 30. Read further to discover 5 trends that will re-shape the business models in the coming years. Trend 1: television is not King anymore Recent studies show that younger watchers between 14 and 25 prefer watching TV on a computer rather than on a TV...

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