If you haven't figured out that the phrase big data will be as pervasive as mobile was in 2012, Smith's analysis of research conducted for Intuit should get your attention. Smith described the emergence of data as a driving economic force. "Data will become a raw material that will be on a par with capital and labor," he said. Personally, I would elaborate that as data will replace silicon, which was the raw material that drove most of the computing revolution until this point. He said that data would do for small businesses what it did for the Oakland Athletics as outlined in the movie "Moneyball", which is to make it possible for smaller businesses to utilize data to become more competitive. From what I’ve heard, we can add the use of data analysis by the Obama re-election campaign. There have been reports that Top 500 companies want to understand how data mining was used to drive decisions.