Collaborative Analytics

The recent news of Amazon hosting all the data related to the human genome project and making it available to researchers across the world is a very good example of collaborative research for the betterment of mankind. I am sure this step will help to speed up research and make information available to smaller organisations that otherwise would have to spend a lot of time and money to get hold of such valuable information. We need more of these kinds of collaborative efforts to help not only industry to prosper but to also make solutions more accessible, available and affordable.

Taking a clue from this event I think there are a lot of avenues within the area of analytics where information, data and outcomes can be shared to improve and hasten projects that can help in reducing the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Healthcare, education, agriculture and energy are some of the areas where collaborative analytics can be deployed to help the planet encompass a more sustainable evolution of the human race or maybe humanity itself. We have many more examples where collaboration across countries, cultures, business and political ideologies have eventually led to larger gains and more profits for enterprise. A case in point is the Kyoto protocol where countries signed up to reducing carbon emissions and enterprise actually profited by adding carbon credits to their balance sheets.

Analytics in my opinion will play a larger role in making things happen purely because of the nature of its use. The more data that can be gathered from different sources to analyse a similar problem can give more insight to the problem and more sustainable and universally acceptable solution. Take for example if there can be a collaborative effort for conduction analytics based research on food production across various continents we can then potentially solve issues around food security and also ensure that nobody dies of starvation in any part of the world. There is definitely a need and in many cases the will to cross barriers and to collaborate to solve larger global problems who knows by improving food production, reducing wastage corporations might just get access to a  whole new market where now people who save on food are willing to spend on say maybe cell phones.