Big Data's Impact on Business Strategy: History and Future
This paper examines the intersection of Big Data and business strategy, tracing the evolution of strategic management from its origins in the 1970s through contemporary technology-driven approaches. Beginning with the shift from managerial capitalism to shareholder capitalism, the paper maps key theoretical contributions from scholars, economists, and behaviorists — including Chandler, Porter, Ansoff, and Ohmae — before analyzing the role of successive technologies, from mainframes and personal computers to networking, cloud computing, and Big Data. The paper argues that Big Data represents the next frontier in business strategy, offering real-time analytics, predictive consumer behavior modeling, and enhanced data integration capabilities that give firms a sustainable competitive advantage in an increasingly data-rich environment.
- Business Strategies and the Competitive Environment: Introduction to Big Data's role in modern business strategy
- History and Evolution of Business Strategy and Leadership: Fifty-year arc of strategic management theory
- Role of Technology in Business Strategy: Mainframes, PCs, networking, and cloud computing in strategy
- Big Data: The Next Best Thing: Big Data capabilities, tools, and real-world business applications
- Conclusion: Big Data as the next paradigm in business strategy
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- The paper constructs a clear historical arc, tracing business strategy from 1970s managerial capitalism through to Big Data, giving each technological era its own analytical weight rather than treating history as mere background.
- It integrates theoretical frameworks (Porter's Five Forces, Ansoff Matrix, Ohmae's 3Cs) alongside practical technology examples (IBM mainframes, Amazon's Hadoop deployment, Santa Cruz policing) to bridge abstract strategy theory with concrete application.
- The Santa Cruz police department case study provides a compelling empirical anchor for the paper's central thesis — that Big Data can predict behavioral patterns — making an otherwise abstract claim tangible and testable.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of a chronological literature synthesis to build a cumulative argument. Rather than reviewing sources in isolation, the author sequences theoretical schools of strategic thought so that each era logically necessitates the next, culminating in Big Data as the natural successor to technology-driven strategy. This technique, sometimes called a developmental literature review, is particularly effective in papers arguing for emerging paradigms.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an overview of Big Data's relevance to modern business strategy, then moves into a historical survey of strategic management theory spanning roughly fifty years. A dedicated section examines the role of successive information technologies in shaping strategy, followed by a focused section on Big Data's capabilities, tools, and real-world applications. The conclusion synthesizes the argument that Big Data is not a peripheral tool but the next dominant paradigm in strategic management.
Business Strategies and the Competitive Environment
The competitive nature of today's business environment is driving companies to use technology-driven business strategies (Berman & Hagan, 2006, p. 28). Big Data and technology are undoubtedly impacting business strategy development. Research indicates that Big Data offers real-time application, which allows businesses to move information to analytics tools from various systems and sources. The ability of a business to analyze consumer behavior based on experiences depends on the capacity of its database system to load, transform, analyze, and present data. Technology is finding wide application in organizations, creating opportunities for strategy formulation, implementation, assessment, and evaluation.
This research identifies key technological advances that are affecting business strategies for today's organizations. To achieve this, the paper maps the development of business strategy from its inception in the 1970s to the current situation, identifying key approaches in the field and developing a road map to show how technology is adopted into the business environment. The goal is to use this road map to demonstrate that the introduction of Big Data represents the beginning of its full-scale application in business strategies in the near future.
The evolution of business strategies has gone hand in hand with the revolution of management approaches. Changes in management occurred mainly in the 1970s, when trustees and managers in control of companies turned to managerial capitalism (Kaen, 2003). Modern capitalism went through two major evolutions: the 1930s-to-1970s era of "managerial capitalism" and the 1980s-to-2000s era of "shareholder capitalism." Managerial capitalism dominated the business scene through its association with innovation and growth driven by trained executives from large international and national firms (Kaen, 2003). In this phase, monopolies under the oversight of labor unions and government shaped the business process. Business strategies led to relatively stable business cycles, which realized increases in investor growth, and the gap between rich and poor decreased.
Currently, evolution in communication and information technology is responsible for the development of management information systems (MIS). The field is designed to assist in acquiring managerial skills necessary for developing strategic capability and supporting the dynamics of businesses and organizations. Information technology systems have led to the need for management approaches that integrate business processes and technology. A manager today requires skills to choose the right business strategy in order to remain competitive — including the development of infrastructure, processes, and systems — while being informed on the use of technology to increase the organization's competitive advantage. Effective business strategy requires an understanding of the functions of management, business processes, and enterprise strategy in order to identify resources and opportunities that Big Data can offer an organization today.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.