Sweat The Small Stuff

Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends – Martin Lindstrom (St. Martin’s Press)

For years we’ve been told “don’t sweat the small stuff.” Now bestselling author and business consultant Martin Lindstrom makes the case that if you want to be a successful business owner that you should be doing the exact opposite; that you need to focus on the small things because the devil is in the details.

With his new book, Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends, the author of Buyology, makes the case that while so-called big data can tell you what people are doing, it is the small data that reveals why they are doing what they are doing.

Through his up close and personal observation of consumers in their environment, rather than in a sterile hotel conference room focus group, Lindstrom manages to drill down to the nuts and bolts of consumers and their behaviors based on methodologies that are rooted in ethnography (the scientific descriptions of people’s cultures and customs) and anthropology.

While hard core data scientists may blanch at some of Lindstrom’s gut level hunch approach to consumer science, it really is hard to argue with a guy who spends 300 nights a year traveling the globe and staying in the homes of those he observes. Consider it consumer science and marketing Airbnb- style.