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By Mo Zhou
Senior Consultant
IBM Global Business Services
One year ago, I was thrilled to watch IBM’s Watson computer win on the TV quiz show Jeopardy! at a special viewing party at Yale University. It was the second year of my MBA program, and I had already accepted a job offer from IBM, so I was rooting for my own team. I was so excited that I stayed until the very end to get the last Watson T-shirt they handed out as a door prize. Today, my profile picture on Facebook shows me proudly wearing the shirt.
So, you could say I’m a poster child for IBM.
But I really represent something that’s much bigger than IBM. I’m pursuing one of the most exciting and important new professions that’s coming on strong in the 21st century: business analytics. I’m a consultant who combines expertise in analytics technology with business know-how. I call myself a business strategy quant.
I had another thrill a couple of weeks ago when Steve Lohr of the New York Times interviewed me for a story about the need for more people with my skills to turn the huge amount of data in our world into useful insights. The story was published today and will hopefully encourage even more students to follow my professional path.
Editor’s note: Nearly two-thirds of all deaths globally occur due to non-communicable diseases. Better prevention and treatment could save tens of millions of lives and reduce healthcare costs dramatically. IBM and Novartis recently sponsored the NCD Challenge, a global university competition aimed at producing innovative solutions addressing NCDs. The winners are Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; and ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, Spain. This guest post was written by the leader of the University of California, Berkeley team.
By Emily S. Ewell
Haas School of Business, University of California-Berkeley
Chronic illness such as asthma, diabetes and cancer need tangible, targeted solutions that maximize impact with the right intervention. Our university’s team in the NCD Challenge chose to narrow in on Type 2 diabetes – a measurable condition and intersection point for countless chronic risk factors. The good news is Type 2 diabetes is nearly 100% preventable by addressing risk factors such as unhealthy diet and physical inactivity.
Focusing on the area of largest need, the developing world, we contextualized our solution in Mexico – a country with an established burden and rapid growth in NCDs. Our team traveled to Mexico City to see and learn for ourselves how diabetes could affect communities, families and individuals.
In the city’s largest hospital waiting room, we met Ana – a pregnant woman with diabetes. She introduced us to her mother and grandmother sitting next to her; all three generations in Ana’s family have diabetes. It became abundantly clear that at the core, diabetes isn’t an individual challenge, but a family challenge driven by habits – passed down from generation to generation. The only way to stop the problem, is to stop the cycle.
With widespread and lifelong behavior change an even greater challenge than NCDs, our team identified a confined touch point where a patient’s motivation is the highest: pregnancy.
We developed a solution called 2Vidas, a pharmacy membership program focused on pregnant women with diabetes. 2Vidas works because it doesn’t ask for lifelong behavior change – it’s a unique time when a woman is most motivated to change for herself and her baby; a short-term intervention with a long-term impact.
2Vidas means “two lives” and it’s a 2-for-1 solution reducing the woman’s risk for complicated birth or c-section and decreasing the child’s lifelong risk for obesity, diabetes, and other NCDs. What happens in a mother’s womb, programs a child for life.
2Vidas is not just a solution for Mexico City, but for women, families, and people with diabetes worldwide. Mexico represents the future of the developing world with rapid urbanization, adoption of Western lifestyles, and dual burdens of disease. With a targeted solution, committed team, and identified potential partners – we hope to make 2Vidas a reality to empower women, families, and communities to combat diabetes around the world.
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Virginie Maillet in
Expectations have been running high for what smart meters and smart grid technology will provide to residential energy consumers in the long run. In the minds of consumers, gaining more control over energy use, improving environmental impacts and managing costs have been firmly associated with the term “smart grid.” But how do people feel about the paths to be traversed to get to an attractive future state where smart grids and smart meters provide such improvements?
Editor’s note: Nearly two-thirds of all deaths globally occur due to non-communicable diseases. Better prevention and treatment could save tens of millions of lives and reduce healthcare costs dramatically. IBM and Novartis recently sponsored the NCD Challenge, a global university competition aimed at producing innovative solutions addressing NCDs. The winners are Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; and ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, Spain. This guest post was written by the leader of the ESADE team.
Join the conversion at People for a Smarter Planet on Facebook and on Twitter at #NCD.
By Ching-Chia Hsu
ESADE Business School-Universidad Ramón Llull
Over the past several decades, because of advances in science, business and government services, life has become easier for many people around the globe. However, one of the side effects of increased wealth and leisure is that a lot of people suffer from non- communicable diseases, which are often the result of poor eating habits and inadequate exercise.
Among NCDs, diabetes is one of the major and most challenging chronic diseases. There are 346 million diabetics worldwide, and this number is expected to double by 2030. In China alone, the population of diabetics tops 90 million, and they account for 14 percent of national healthcare expenditures.
The severity of the diabetes epidemic was what inspired my university’s team in the NCD Challenge to create a innovative way of lessening its impact. The other team members were: Meng-Chi Chen, Alexander Anthonysamy, Kohei Sato and Feras Nagadi,
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Virginie Maillet in
With public-sector budgets under greater pressure and scrutiny than ever, having the ability to fine-tune services and to deliver them where they’re needed most is becoming increasingly important. Social media gives city authorities this opportunity, tapping into public sentiment in real time – albeit only that portion of the public using social media and in a raw form.
Crucially, it’s not just a case of passively watching and listening to what citizens are saying. The social web also makes it possible to reach out in new ways. Social networks mean local government can carry out surveys – and publicise them – at relatively low cost. Insights gained in this way not only represent a significant cash saving; they can also be carried out more rapidly than traditional opinion polls, with no paper processing delays and no risk of data transcription errors. Continue Reading »
by Marty Minniti, RN
Marty Minniti, RN, is product development chief, Care PartnersPlus-Wellby. Wellby is a new interactive healthcare management solution for use in physician offices, hospitals, work sites and retail pharmacies to collect and exchange feedback from patients at the point of care. Wellby uses IBM kiosks, the same familiar technology found in airports, hotels and self-service kiosks in retail environments.
Recently on a trip from Boston to Philadelphia, I read an article in The New Yorker on brain storming and group thinking. What caught my interest was the description of the work of two social scientists who studied more than 474 Broadway productions looking for what made both an ideal team and a financially successful Broadway hit. Continue Reading »
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Virginie Maillet in
What makes a smarter social media city? At its best, it is:
Engaging
It promotes citizen involvement and builds a new sense of
ownership with scope for collaboration in every aspect of city life.
Transparent
It lifts the bonnet on how the city works – processes are visible,
dialogue is open, feedback is swift.
Nimble
It delivers services in real time with an enhanced ability to adjust
to citizens’ fast-changing needs.
Secure
It respects privacy, protects data and leverages technology to
enhance the physical security of citizens.
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Steve Hamm in
Sometimes, when Volodymyr Pigrukh, CEO of Profitero, wants to grab the attention of a retailer he sees as a potential customer, he shows them just how well his pricing analysis software works with a shocking demonstration. He runs an analysis of the retailer’s prices compared to the most aggressive of its competitors, grabs a screen shot of the comparison and sends it to the company’s executives via e-mail. Those retailers whose prices stack up poorly against the competition understand viscerally the value that Profitero’s software can bring them. “I hope nobody got fired in the process,” he says.
Profitero has only 13 employees–divided between Ireland and Belarus–but that didn’t stop the one-year-old startup from winning the IBM Entrepreneur of the Year award last night in San Francisco. The company bested eight other young outfits from around the world who competed in the finals of the annual IBM SmartCamp competition–a program targeting companies whose products and services align with the Smarter Planet strategy. The finalists were the winners of nine regional contests held in Barcelona, New York, Austin, Shanghai, Bangalore, London, Tel Aviv, Rio de Janeiro and Istanbul.
Almost all of the finalists offer analytics software or services–demonstrating that there’s a role for startups in the huge and fast growing global analytics software market.
Today marks the culmination of the IBM SmartCamp global entrepreneur competition. Nine startups from around the globe have spent the past three days in San Francisco learning from venture capital and business leaders, honing their VC pitches, getting feedback from mentors and networking with one another. Today, at the Bently Reserve, they made their final pitches and listened to speeches by government and business leaders.
The winner is….
Profitero, from Ireland (by way of Ukraine and Belarus), is the winner of the IBM Global Enterpreneur of the Year award.
Congratulations Profitero!
The People’s Vote Award Winner is….
IDXP, from Brazil, won the popular vote with 845 votes of a total of 2537 votes cast. Profitero came in second, and C-B4 came in third.
Congrats IDXP!
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John Squire is IBM’s director of Digital Marketing and Analytics.
Updated Post
AN UPSET IN THE MAKING
3 February 2012, 11:30 AM Eastern
Just like on the field, Eli Manning is riding a late surge to overtake Tom Brady in the IBM and USC analysis of Super Bowl XLVI social media sentiment. Overnight results of Super Bowl Twitter buzz drove Giants quarterback Eli Manning’s ‘T score’ for positive sentiment ahead of Tom Brady. Manning now leads with 66% vs. Brady’s 61%, which represents an 8-point shift compared to the previous day. In another interesting development positive sentiment for Giants head coach jumped dramatically with his score rating increasing to 76% positive. That places Coach Coughlin above all of the players and coaches on both teams.
This day-to-day shift in Super Bowl fan sentiment illustrates the speed at which consumer sentiments can shift online — a factor that businesses are watching closely due to the potential impact on their brand equity and sales.
By applying analytics in social media settings we can identify nuances – positive, negative, irony, snarky vs. sincerity, in real-time. That’s enough time to help an organization, or in this case professional athletes, adjust their comments and actions to dramatically (and positively) impact their brands.
Original Post
SUPER BOWL ANALYSIS TAKES US BEYOND THE TWEETS
2 February 2012
One of the most dramatic NFL games ever played was Super Bowl XLII pitting the undefeated (18–0) New England Patriots led by record-setting quarterback Tom Brady against the surprising NY Giants with young, unproven Eli Manning at the helm. A thrilling, some say shocking victory for the Giants ended the Patriots bid to be the only 19–0 undefeated champion in league history. And now Super Bowl XLVI – The Rematch — anticipated to be the most watched American television show in history, promises to take social media to a whole new level.
As my colleague, and former NFL player Kevin Nosbusch posted on Wednesday, IBM and the University of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab are conducting the first sentiment analysis of the two Super Bowl quarterbacks to illustrate how new analytics technologies make it possible to quickly assess the positive, negative and neutral sentiments shared by fans.
Why is this sentiment analysis important to IBM? In addition to being a longtime partner of the NFL, IBM recognizes that its clients, just like football players, are closely connected to their brand presence.
Using advances in analytics companies, academics, journalists can gain new insights into consumer perceptions via social media on endless topics from football and baseball to movies and retailing. Technologies can even distinguish irony and figure out which tweets are just background noise and those that are truly important.
Branding Upset on the Digital Playing Field
The Super Bowl analysis shows us that today the two quarterbacks, Tom Brady and Eli Manning are in statistical dead heat: Brady earning 65% positive sentiment and Eli Manning earning 62% positive sentiment. That actually represents a big branding upset on the digital playing field. Most sports and marketing followers would assume that Brady should be far ahead given his lofty status as an elite QB for many years and three championship rings.
Other noteworthy findings show that wide receivers have upstaged the quarterbacks, who are being positioned in the news media as the chief protagonists — Wes Welker is #1 in positive sentiment and Victor Cruz is a close 2nd. Interestingly Brady leads by 3% points, exactly the point spread Las Vegas oddsmakers have favored the Patriots.
So while it looks like Tom Brady is going into the game as the Social MVP, now is not the time to get cocky. Eli Manning is holding his own against the more experienced Brady in terms of positive sentiment.
The IBM USC analysis illustrates the potential insight and benefits that social media analytics can deliver to a brand — whether you’re an professional football player or a global enterprise. Businesses that ignore the impact of social media will be stuck on the sidelines.
Learn more about IBM and USC AIL social media analysis projects.
