Outside Innovation

Data Mining, Privacy and Personalization: Cyberazzi

If you want to be “creeped out” when it comes to how much personal data is being collected and aggregated about you, read Natasha Singer’s article, “You For Sale: Mapping, and Sharing, the Consumer Genome” which appeared in The New York Times’ Sunday Business section, on June 17th. It’s an exposé of Acxiom. Acxiom and Epsilon are two of the largest data miners and aggregators who mine, aggregate, and sell information about each of us to companies willing to pay for that information.

Singer reports that Acxiom has 1500 data points on 500 million active consumers. These include your income, many details about your health, your food preferences, the current assessed value of your home, your birth date, your race, what stocks/bonds you hold, what you weigh, what movies are in your collection, etc. Acxiom sells this information about you to corporations with whom you already do business as well as to those who want to target market to you. And collecting, mining, and reselling information about each of us—individually, and in aggregate—is perfectly legal…at least in the U.S.:

[In the U.S.,] “such large-scale data mining and analytics—based on information available in public records, consumer surveys and the like—are perfectly legal…In essence, it’s as if the ore of our data-driven lives were being mined, refined and sold to the highest bidder, usually without our knowledge—by companies that most people rarely even know they exist.”

~ Natasha Singer, The New York Times

Why You Can’t CONTROL Your Online Identity (and What to Do About It)

Since I’ve been writing about online privacy issues and critiquing the ways in which Google and Facebook mine our online behavior and that of our friends—often without our explicit knowledge or consent—many of my customers and colleagues have been sharing their own views about privacy and identity. Peter Horne, an Australian financial services technology architect and business strategist, has been an active member of “Patty’s Pioneers” for fifteen years. I like the way that Peter thinks about online privacy and identity management, so I asked him to put some thoughts together for our readers. In his article, “How to Think about Privacy and Managing Your Online Identity,” Peter offers a useful construct for understanding what we can control and what we can’t control in terms of our online personas. He also provides some pragmatic suggestions about how to minimize your risk, while still using Facebook and Google. You can read more of Pete’s thoughtful insights on his blog, echoedthoughts.com.

Learn from Alaska Airlines’ Director of Customer Innovation

By Ronni Marshak

In her interview with Curtis Kopf, Managing Director, AlaskaAir.com and Customer Innovation, Patty Seybold learned how the commitment to providing an exceptional customer experience resulted in the airline’s pioneering work in customer-facing innovation. It surprised me to learn that Alaska Air Group (Alaska and Horizon Airlines) is the seventh largest airline in the U.S. (Here, on the East Coast, Alaska Air seems very niche and exotic). Further, the airline was the first to book flights and sell tickets via the Internet, the first to offer Web check-in, the first to use onboard POS devices to accept debit and credit cards in the air, among other innovations! Who knew?

Curtis Kopf heads up Alaska Airlines’ digital, mobile, and ecommerce team. Patty is a fan of his combination of responsibilities: “It’s hard to separate e-commerce and online self-service from mobile tools and your mobile-friendly web site. So it also makes sense to combine mobile and e-commerce/online under one role. But what’s different and particularly interesting to me about Curtis Kopf’s role at Alaska Airlines is his involvement in the company’s initiatives to use technology to make it easy for customers to get things done when they’re interacting with Alaska Airlines and its personnel at the airport and/or on the plane.”

How could your organization benefit from an explicit executive focus on customer innovation? Maybe it’s time to hire or promote a Director/VP of Customer Innovation in your company.

~ Ronni

Managing Customer Innovation at Alaska Airlines
Alaska Airlines Combines Customer Innovation with E-Commerce & Mobile
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO and Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, May 31, 2012