Leveraging Data to Drive Innovation

We're hitting big data for one big reason, which is that our life is incredibly measurable. That started with the Internet, which could measure what we did in our lives. In your pocket, you have basically a data-acquisition device—your phone—which has the capacity to generate more data about every day than you've had in your entire life.

On big data and health

Genesis Photos for The Wall Street Journal

Every one of you right now is generating actionable data about your own personal health, your body temperature, your heart rate. It's all measurable. The phone in your pocket could do a little bit of that measuring right now, but ultimately we'll do more. The question is: Is that something that you yourself use to make better choices about your life? Or is it something that institutions—including, possibly, insurance companies—would use about you? What we learned from privacy issues on the Internet is that one size doesn't fit all. Everybody should have a dial that says, "Where do I want to set my personal transparency?" If I don't want it set to 11, I should be able to turn it down to 2.

On data reshaping agriculture

Enlarge Image

Farmers know very little about their crops; they basically walk along the road and look at the crops and maybe do spot checking. But these areas are miles large, so you're guessing. In the absence of certainty about things like, "Do I have a fungal infection on my wheat crop," you end up overusing fungicide and pesticide, and you overwater. If farmers could know what's going on everywhere in their crop all the time, they'd be making better choices.

On information overload

We are drowning in data. But we don't have enough ability to analyze it. The more data you throw at something, you will find correlations—but correlation is not causation. What we now have is a demand for statisticians to shrink down the correlations to things that can be tested. Because if you don't, you're going to end up chasing mirages.

A version of this article appeared January 22, 2013, on page B14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Leveraging Data to Drive Innovation.