Hard numbers tell an important story; user stats and sales numbers will always be key metrics. But every day, your users are sharing a huge amount of qualitative data, too - and a lot of companies either don't know how or forget to act on it.
We'd all like to be in the business where we don't have to report our numbers, too. You're dealing with a Netflix and an Amazon that don't have to report their viewership. They're not sharing those numbers, so how do you work with a creative entity to renegotiate future seasons when nobody has metrics?
I've seen how the issues that come across a president's desk are always the hard ones - the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.
I know a few CEOs who delegate the understanding of their financials and their business metrics to the CFO, and then stop worrying about all that 'numbers stuff.' Don't do that. You have to know your numbers inside and out - they are your life blood.
I ask people what they do in sales, how much money they made last year, what their cost of sales is, and they don't even know. If you don't know your numbers, you're going out of business. I don't care how good your product is.
I will do plays as long as they're interested in having me do them. It's the biggest opportunity to learn the most about how to act. Something I discover every time I'm doing one is how little I know about acting - how important the art of listening is, and how important it is to listen with your entire body. You can tell so much of a story with stillness, and a lot of that can be from really actively listening to your scene partner.
A lot of people want to have market share numbers, lots of users, because that's how they view their self worth. For me, one of the most important things for Linux is having a big community that is actively testing new kernels; it's the only way to support the absolute insane amount of different hardware we deal with.
We tell our portfolio companies that it's really important to be metrics-driven and to track their conversions. It goes back to building that scalable sales model.
When I moved into management, it was all about managing people and keeping them motivated - I didn't use sales metrics to drive my business. Now, everything comes from the numbers.
I spend way too much time watching television, going to sports games, going to movies. It struck me that there's an awful lot of data in the public domain for these sectors. The movie industry publishes weekly sales numbers - not many industries do.
Laboratory tests are the next set of important numbers to know. Here are the key lab test numbers you need to know: 1. Complete blood count 2. General metabolic panel with fasting blood sugar and lipid panel 3. HgA1C 4. Vitamin D 5. Thyroid panel 6. C-reactive protein
I do not keep a track of numbers as such, but I am definitely aware of how a film of mine is doing when it is playing in theatres. More than the numbers, it is important to know how the audience is reacting to the film.
How can you be on top of the things you do? I think when you are involved in a business, first of all you need to know the business. After that you know the business, you can - the numbers tell you what is happening. You can read with the numbers.
It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.
Big data is mostly about taking numbers and using those numbers to make predictions about the future. The bigger the data set you have, the more accurate the predictions about the future will be.
Facebook collects a lot of data from people and admits it. And it also collects data which isn't admitted. And Google does too. As for Microsoft, I don't know. But I do know that Windows has features that send data about the user.
Think of how Wikipedia works, how Amazon harnesses user annotation on its site, the way photo-sharing sites like Flickr are bleeding out into other applications. We're entering an era in which software learns from its users and all of the users are connected.