Facing and embracing a changing world – with sneakers and energy

If I had to sum up what I’ve learned at yesterday’s Teradata Enterprise Intelligence Summit, it would probably go like this: the world is changing and that’s OK, as long as we respond accordingly. Geoff Burch claimed that managers need to notice when their staff are doing things right – one of the basic rules of motivation. But how do you empower people to get things right in the first place? Hermann Wimmer’s answer during the closing session: By handing them the information they need. He made an impassionate plea: “Set information in your organization free so that every decision is a smart decision”.

The eagerly awaited keynote of Joschka Fischer, the former Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister of Germany, was equally passionate. I love the story of Joschka Fischer wearing sneakers at his inauguration as the first minister of the German green party in 1985, which my German colleagues told me. Pretty bold in a surrounding that couldn’t be any more formal! In addition to making a fashion statement, wearing sneakers also demonstrates a dynamic and forward-looking mindset. It seems to me that Fischer started a trend with it. Or do you still find it odd that Steve Jobs always gives his famous presentations wearing sneakers.

Apart from his forward-looking “sneakers-attitude”, Fischer is also known for being a strong advocate of environmental protection. That doesn’t mean he longs for pre-industrialized times, he rather embraces high tech as part of the solution. You could have heard a pin drop when Fischer drew an impressive picture of the ongoing shift in power from the Western countries to the emerging new economic powerhouses in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. At last, billions of people are reaching a decent standard of living through progress in society and technology – and that is definitely a good thing, a dream coming true! There are downsides to this development however. They include shortages in energy and water supply as well as worldwide environmental pollution and climate change – quite severe consequences. Fischer’s conclusion: Since we only have one world, the challenges of this century can only be managed if all mankind act as one, which so far has never been the case. Waste of resources, especially energy, must come to an end quickly, because we are definitely running out of time. Instead, we urgently need to make energy supply more efficient and to enforce the adoption of renewables.

We at Teradata share this view. And we strongly believe that data warehousing is indispensible here. The “smart grid”, for example, would not work without a precise and dynamic, real-time picture of the electricity networks. The same applies if you want to give your customers an opportunity to find out about the carbon footprint for, let’s say, flying from Milan to Berlin, and to choose the “greenest” option accordingly. In addition to saving energy and enabling ecologically responsible decisions, data warehousing also makes energy supply more reliable. After all it is, in a way, a long supply chain, in which you need to forecast demand and order pre-products timely and accurately, for example. This is definitely one field in which advanced analytics will play a crucial role in the next ten years.