4,439 research outputs found
Estimating achievement from fame
We report a method for estimating people's achievement based on their fame.
Earlier we discovered (cond-mat/0310049) that fame of fighter pilot aces
(measured as number of Google hits) grows exponentially with their achievement
(number of victories). We hypothesize that the same functional relation between
achievement and fame holds for other professions. This allows us to estimate
achievement for professions where an unquestionable and universally accepted
measure of achievement does not exist. We apply the method to Nobel Prize
winners in Physics. For example, we obtain that Paul Dirac, who is hundred
times less famous than Einstein contributed to physics only two times less. We
compare our results with Landau's ranking
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To boardrooms and sustainability: the changing nature of segmentation
Market segmentation is the process by which customers in markets with some heterogeneity
are grouped into smaller homogeneous segments of more ‘similar’ customers. A market
segment is a group of individuals, groups or organisations sharing similar characteristics and
buying behaviour that cause them to have relatively similar needs and purchasing behaviour.
Segmentation is not a new concept: for six decades marketers have, in various guises, sought to
break-down a market into sub-groups of users, each sharing common needs, buying behavior
and marketing requirements. However, this approach to target market strategy development
has been rejuvenated in the past few years. Various reasons account for this upsurge in the
usage of segmentation, examination of which forms the focus of this white paper.
Ready access to data enables faster creation of a segmentation and the testing of propositions to
take to market. ‘Big data’ has made the re-thinking of target market segments and value
propositions inevitable, desirable, faster and more flexible. The resulting information has
presented companies with more topical and consumer-generated insights than ever before.
However, many marketers, analytics directors and leadership teams feel over-whelmed by the
sheer quantity and immediacy of such data.
Analytical prowess in consultants and inside client organisations has benefited from a stepchange,
using new heuristics and faster computing power, more topical data and stronger
market insights. The approach to segmentation today is much smarter and has stretched well
away from the days of limited data explored only with cluster analysis. The coverage and wealth
of the solutions are unimaginable when compared to the practices of a few years ago. Then,
typically between only six to ten segments were forced into segmentation solutions, so that an
organisation could cater for these macro segments operationally as well as understand them
intellectually. Now there is the advent of what is commonly recognised as micro segmentation,
where the complexity of business operations and customer management requires highly
granular thinking. In support of this development, traditional agency/consultancy roles have
transitioned into in-house business teams led by data, campaign and business change planners.
The challenge has shifted from developing a granular segmentation solution that describes all
customers and prospects, into one of enabling an organisation to react to the granularity of the
solution, deploying its resources to permit controlled and consistent one-to-one interaction
within segments. So whilst the cost of delivering and maintaining the solution has reduced with
technology advances, a new set of systems, costs and skills in channel and execution
management is required to deliver on this promise. These new capabilities range from rich
feature creative and content management solutions, tailored copy design and deployment tools,
through to instant messaging middleware solutions that initiate multi-streams of activity in a
variety of analytical engines and operational systems.
Companies have recruited analytics and insight teams, often headed by senior personnel, such as
an Insight Manager or Analytics Director. Indeed, the situations-vacant adverts for such
personnel out-weigh posts for brand and marketing managers. Far more companies possess the
in-house expertise necessary to help with segmentation analysis. Some organisations are also
seeking to monetise one of the most regularly under-used latent business assets… data.
Developing the capability and culture to bring data together from all corners of a business, the open market, commercial sources and business partners, is a step-change, often requiring a
Chief Data Officer. This emerging role has also driven the professionalism of data exploration,
using more varied and sophisticated statistical techniques.
CEOs, CFOs and COOs increasingly are the sponsor of segmentation projects as well as the users
of the resulting outputs, rather than CMOs. CEOs because recession has forced re-engineering of
value propositions and the need to look after core customers; CFOs because segmentation leads
to better and more prudent allocation of resources – especially NPD and marketing – around the
most important sub-sets of a market; COOs because they need to better look after key
customers and improve their satisfaction in service delivery. More and more it is recognised that
with a new segmentation comes organisational realignment and change, so most business
functions now have an interest in a segmentation project, not only the marketers.
Largely as a result of the digital era and the growth of analytics, directors and company
leadership teams are becoming used to receiving more extensive market intelligence and
quickly updated customer insight, so leading to faster responses to market changes, customer
issues, competitor moves and their own performance. This refreshing of insight and a leadership
team’s reaction to this intelligence often result in there being more frequent modification of a
target market strategy and segmentation decisions.
So many projects set up to consider multi-channel strategy and offerings; digital marketing;
customer relationship management; brand strategies; new product and service development;
the re-thinking of value propositions, and so forth, now routinely commence with a
segmentation piece in order to frame the ongoing work. Most organisations have deployed
CRM systems and harnessed associated customer data. CRM first requires clarity in segment
priorities. The insights from a CRM system help inform the segmentation agenda and steer how
they engage with their important customers or prospects. The growth of CRM and its ensuing
data have assisted the ongoing deployment of segmentation.
One of the biggest changes for segmentation is the extent to which it is now deployed by
practitioners in the public and not-for-profit sectors, who are harnessing what is termed social
marketing, in order to develop and to execute more shrewdly their targeting, campaigns and
messaging. For Marketing per se, the interest in the marketing toolkit from non-profit
organisations, has been big news in recent years. At the very heart of the concept of social
marketing is the market segmentation process.
The extreme rise in the threat to security from global unrest, terrorism and crime has focused
the minds of governments, security chiefs and their advisors. As a result, significant resources,
intellectual capability, computing and data management have been brought to bear on the
problem. The core of this work is the importance of identifying and profiling threats and so
mitigating risk. In practice, much of this security and surveillance work harnesses the tools
developed for market segmentation and the profiling of different consumer behaviours.
This white paper presents the findings from interviews with leading exponents of segmentation
and also the insights from a recent study of marketing practitioners relating to their current
imperatives and foci. More extensive views of some of these ‘leading lights’ have been sought
and are included here in order to showcase the latest developments and to help explain both
the ongoing surge of segmentation and the issues under-pinning its practice. The principal
trends and developments are thereby presented and discussed in this paper
Volcanoes and global catastrophes
The search for a single explanation for global mass extinctions has let to polarization and the controversies that are often fueled by widespread media attention. The historic record shows a roughly linear log-log relation between the frequency of explosive volcanic eruptions and the volume of their products. Eruptions such as Mt. St. Helens 1980 produce on the order of 1 cu km of tephra, destroying life over areas in the 10 to 100 sq km range, and take place, on the average, once or twice a decade. Eruptions producing 10 cu km take place several times a century and, like Krakatau 1883, destroy life over 100 to 1000 sq km areas while producing clear global atmospheric effects. Eruptions producting 10,000 cu km are known from the Quaternary record, and extrapolation from the historic record suggests that they occur perhaps once in 20,000 years, but none has occurred in historic time and little is known of their biologic effects. Even larger eruptions must also exist in the geologic record, but documentation of their volume becomes increasingly difficult as their age increases. The conclusion is inescapable that prehistoric eruptions have produced catastrophes on a global scale: only the magnitude of the associated mortality is in question. Differentiation of large magma chambers is on a time scale of thousands to millions of years, and explosive volcanoes are clearly concentrated in narrow belts near converging plate margins. Volcanism cannot be dismissed as a producer of global catastrophes. Its role in major extinctions is likely to be at least contributory and may well be large. More attention should be paid to global effects of the many huge eruptions in the geologic record that dwarf those known in historic time
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