Implicações do fenômeno big data na análise para inteligência estratégica

Abstract

A considerable amount of data is daily produced by business and financial operations, social media, mobile devices, sensors as well as other gadgets available in the world. This phenomenon gave rise to the big data term whose effects can be perceived by companies, science and governments. However, the strategic intelligence, not the information itself, supports managers eliciting values from big volume of data. For this purpose, transforming the dispersed information in the environment into structure knowledge is necessary and useful for organizations’ decisions. This is a complex process, and despite the tools and available techniques, it is indispensable that the professional in intelligence knows how to deal with inherit cognitive complexity in the courses of analyses. In this context, the objective of the present work was examining how the phenomenon big data affected the course of analyses in the strategic intelligence activity. The research was addressed on how the phenomenon big data was perceived by the interviewers in their analytics activities in strategic intelligence. It also proposed analysis based on its implications. In order to achieve this, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted. Several Brazilian professionals were interviewed, including residents in states such as Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Distrito Federal and São Paulo. Those interviewed were chosen by agents with experience and knowledge in the strategic intelligence field and/or big data. The guide used for the interviews was structured from dimensions of big data phenomenon and its effects on the course of analyses in the strategic intelligence activity. The technique used for analyzing data was through content review. Results indicate that the volume of big data contributes to the comprehension of collection methods even though it eventually might debilitate the ability to grasp the topic. Other discoveries show that for some of those interviewed, big data has already integrated professional practices on not only performing a more detailed analyses but also developing specific projects. Nevertheless, big data is not a reality yet for others since the necessity of utilizing big volume of data for analysis is not really being perceived. This fact also denotes a paradox between the characterization of production knowledge within big data field and its use in the professional area of strategic intelligence. On the one hand, the great workload about big data is located in the professional area of productive organizations. Not in the academy, though. After all, intelligence professionals have not realized yet the real value of big data phenomenon for their professional performance.