Information & Innovative Thinking in the Digital Environment

Digital Information & Environment

Today, we will look at the digital environment, 4 key trends of movement with digital information. Professor Michael Rappa's podcast looks at data space/storage, amount of data, search engines and businesses or organizations and how they take advantage of this situation.

The four prominent elements Rappa talks about are:

Data Space:

Since the creation of computers and the internet, the progress of data storage has been rapid. Each year companies come out with larger storage units and with that it has become easier to store data without throwing anything out. Hard drives and memory cards are capable of storing vast amounts of information.


 Amount of Data:

The amount of information out there is so vast and rapidly growing. Rappa uses the Library of Congress as a benchmark to measure the average of information created daily. He says that approximately 37 Libraries are created daily. With this much noise it becomes rather hard to find relevant information.

Search Engines:

With the information becoming difficult to find the creation of companies such as Yahoo, Google, Bing were essential. In the past information was scarce, now where finding that the information being created is abundant and overwhelming. Search engines ability to build a network or web of information is becoming essential.

Businesses & Organizations:

With the development of online stores, how can they be found. Originally businesses where found though advertising. The early days of the internet had seen the creation of banner ads and domain names. Now where seeing the rapid expansion of search based advertisement. Google has tied those people who looking for a product to the business offering it. Businesses are now paying for their result to be put at the top of the search, it is called a Paid Placement Search.

You can find Rappa's podcast under the following URL under navigation:

http://digitalenterprise.org/podcasts/navigation.mp3

Innovative Thinking:

We will also look at Marissa Mayer's interview on YouTube she makes some key points on the internet, however I believe it was her way off setting an environment where employees could implement their own ideas which was the key to Google's success over the last few years to now become a major player.

Mayer talked about:

• The ideas users of Google created and their implementation of those ideas to create something special. The creation of Google desktop
• The ideas their engineers created such as Google news
• Executives ideas surrounding email which led to the creation of Gmail as a more efficient may of checking emails and;
• Ideas that where created from completing a strategic analysis of their company against others (their competitors) which led to the creation of Google Maps and Google Finance
  

                                                                  

Meeting the needs of  the users by making sure that their products walk out the door the way they would like it by continually improving the products that they build.

The culture and working efficiently by putting people in teams of 2 or 3 to build empowerment and decision making quickly and decisively. Also building these groups to be doing as many things that they can possibly do.


Have a look at the video URL if the link doesn't work at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw5j6aI8sg