The Physics of Knowledge
 

Behavior Based Services

Choosing to follow the directions provided by Waze or Moovit as a traveler is to mimic the behavior also used when being entertained by Netflix, the online streaming service. After some initial data input, Netflix provides the consumer with recommended shows based on customer profiles similar to theirs as well as previous behavior.

“If you look at Netflix, the way that people choose their TV tells Netflix what to make next. We are realizing that the focus has to be on the human and the why,” data expert Carrathurs says of using data to understand behavior.

Data technology consultant Raj Sachdave of Black Box Partnership describes the strategy of Netflix as “social listening… and streaming services are doing it really well.”

Jo Boswell, a customer experience expert and former Head of Customer Value with global airline British Airways (BA) identifies that Waze and Strava provide a reward to the user and this drives social physics, but business travel may struggle to find the same behavioral benefit. “There is a value exchange for those giving up their data, with Strava it is about the competition. People have to see a benefit from sharing data.”

 “The social physics approach to getting everyone to cooperate is to use social network incentives rather than individual market incentives,” social physics creator Alex Pentland says.

Underpinning social physics is Big Data, the term often used for major enterprises to collate massive levels of data using the power and affordability of cloud computing. Pentland says social physics relies on data from call records, credit card transaction information and GPS insights. This data creates “digital breadcrumbs” for social physics and organizations can then “reality mine”, to discover an accurate insight into how communities truly act, rather than how they told a survey or social media they acted. Pentland and experts in social physics believe this data is more accurate because survey and social media data is driven by how the individual wants to be perceived to be behaving.

Carrathurs agrees with Pentland: “Data has to underpin what you are going to do and to have a holistic point of view,” she says.

“Social physics tells you what is really going on,” says Sachdave of Black Box Partnership. Krau at Festive Road also says social physics lends itself to making more informed buying decisions.

Social physics is not dismissive of social media and is in many ways a new data model to provide organizations with a more accurate way of modelling its products or services.  “My research shows that both people’s desires and their decisions about how to act are often, and perhaps typically, dominated by the social network effect. Our preferences are mostly based on what our peer community agrees is valuable,” Pentland says.

In an age of polarized views and individualism, social physics reminds us that there is always a counter culture and although data provides an insight into the individual, it also informs organizations of mass behavior and how to tailor and build services.