Avinash's magnificent zoo, and the unfulfilled promise of Big Data

Avinash (Web Analytics 2.0) is fond of animal metaphors. I think he's the one who coined HIPPOs (Highest Paid Person's Opinion). Now he's come up with Reporting Squirrels and Analysis Ninjas. See his recent post here. In short, he is shouting about "return on analytics", a really, really important thing. What is being lost in the hype of Big Data is that all the investment in analytics has to generate value for businesses. All too often, the "data scientists" have no idea what tangible value they are creating. For example, I saw presentations from two different tech firms that have...