CLOUD
“ What could businesses learn — about themselves , their suppliers , their stakeholders — if , not unlike Zappa , they cross-referenced the source material already in their possession ?”
— Sean Thompson , Senior Vice President of Business Network and Ecosystem , SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass
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I n the 1970s , the composer Frank Zappa pioneered a technique called xenochrony , where he superimposed an element from an existing recording , such as a guitar solo , onto that from another , such as a drum track , typically of a different time signature . To his legion of fans , the convergence of rhythm and tonality brought out unexpected — and often pleasing — musical patterns .
He understood that in music , innovation can arise through the detection of latent patterns in sources of disparate origin . Yet Zappa , a shrewd entrepreneur , might never have imagined the same principle would hold true in business decades later . Today , businesses capture vast reservoirs of data on a regular basis — about their customers , their trading partners , and their own operations . But this data often resides on information systems that don ’ t “ talk ” to each other . As a result , many businesses fail to extract the insights hidden away in them .
What could businesses learn — about themselves , their suppliers , their
SEPTEMBER 2019