Great Digital Companies Build Great Recommendation Engines

Perhaps the single most important algorithmic distinction between "born digital" enterprises and legacy companies is not their people, data sets, or computational resources, but a clear real-time commitment to delivering accurate, actionable customer recommendations. Recommendation engines (or recommenders) force organizations to fundamentally rethink how to get greater value from their data while creating greater value for their customers. "Build real recommendation engines fast" is my mission-critical recommendation to companies aspiring -- or struggling -- to creatively cross the digital divide. Use recommenders to make it easier to gain better insight into customers while they're getting better information about you. Recommenders' true genius comes from their opportunity to build virtuous business cycles: The more people use them, the more valuable they become; the more valuable they become, the more people use them.