How to use data to make business decisions

1. How to Avoid A
Decision You Will
Regret for 139 Years
Presented by: Eli Schwartz

2. Meet Alexander Graham Bell

3. Just months after inventing the telephone, he
sought a quick exit for his startup

4. Source: http://on.recode.net/19KT8we
The Western Union committee
decided:
“Bell wants to install a “telephone device” in
every city. The idea is idiotic on the face of it.
Furthermore, why would any person want to
use this ungainly and impractical device when
he can send a messenger to the telegraph
office and have a clear written message sent to
any large city in the United States?
”

5. For a mere $100k, this could have been Western Union

6. bit.ly/tia15
Answer #11 gets a free SurveyMonkey Gold
account for 1 year!
Take this survey:

7. Let’s try to replicate
this decision

8. Imagine you are
the CEO of Nokia
and are offered
the patent for a
new mobile
operating system

9. Imagine you are
the CEO of Nokia
and are offered
the patent for a
new mobile
operating system
That is placed in a
human eye

10. What differentiates investment
and gambling?

11. Big
Data

12. Big Data discovers insights that couldn’t be
discovered by human observation alone

13. • Google Trends
• Healthdata.gov
• Data.gov.sg
• Amazon.com datasets
• /r/datasets (reddit)
• OpenSignal
• Alchemy API

14. Big Data cannot be your primary data.

15. ArtistBig data might declare a teacher is really a…

17. Little Data is about the customer

18. Warning: Bias kills your data

19. Use online tools to collect data

20. 74% 26%
Samples sizes are
overrated…
… but ignore the noise.

21. User opinions matter…
Somewhat

22. Use Net
Promoter Score
Don’t reinvent the
wheel!

23. What about the fans?
So which one is it?
What about a flip phone?

24.  Ask and analyze regularly
Don’t make the same mistakes
twice 

25. • Design surveys without bias
• Embrace your data, ignore
noise
• Study open ended answers
• Sample questions are good
shortcuts
• Eradicate bad questions
• Regular scheduled analysis
• Tools in the cloud, not paper

26. But…
where to find
respondents?

27. So, should Nokia invest?

28. • High NPS for iPhone
• Not so happy with
Android & Windows
• Would put a contact lens
in their eye, but not a
smart lens
• Bonus: More people
have FB messenger
than Skype, Whatsapp &
Hangouts together!See the results from the 300+ respondents:
http://svy.mk/1ECPcgo
So, should Nokia invest?

29. Thank you!
Email any questions:
elis@surveymonkey.com
Twitter: @5le
http://j.mp/elislides