1. With all the data available to us today, very few decisions should be based on faith. 
2. Look for industries where data is fragmented and needs aggregation.
3. (a) Find the decisions and actions that your business has to take. (b) Then find the answers based on which you can take those decisions and actions. (c) Then design your information system to get those answers.
4. Get data from people & give them something useful in return (Think Google’s services). Data is the currency that runs businesses.
5. “tackling Big Data will determine the winners and losers in the next wave of cloud computing innovation.” - A GigaOm article.
6. Data can provide defensibility (Ex, Groupon’s future direction) by acting as a source of customization, uniqueness, innovation, etc.
7. Data can be used as a marketing tool: OKTrends, Admob Mobile Metrics.

Data Opportunities

1. Infrastructure - Serve the infrastructural needs of big data. For example, storage, management and security of data in cloud-based systems. Ex, Imperva.
2. Capture – Collect data more efficiently, cheaply, or from new sources. Ex, Google Analytics.
3. Structure – Translate and structure data for use / analysis.
4. Analysis – Extract meaningful information from data that help customers in making important decisions. Future opportunities lie in predictive analysis. Ex, Netflix recommendations.
5. Visualization – Present data in a simple and friendly way. Ex, Hipmunk, Flipboard.
6. Real-time – Use real-time data to remove inefficiency and unreliability. Ex, Echo.