Introducing Flash Stories, published as news happens. Short, sweet, and to the point. Brought to you by Alchemer’s Editorial Team.
“Much has been written about big data initiatives and the efforts of market leaders to derive critical business insights faster. Less has been written about initiatives by some of these same firms to apply big data and analytics to a different set of issues, which are not solely focused on revenue growth or bottom line profitability,” writes Randy Bean, CEO and managing partner of consultancy at NewVantage Partners.
Today’s Story:
- Forbes reports that Mastercard — self-identified as a “technology company in the payments industry” — executives shared testimony before the Senate Committee earlier this year that the company’s independent subsidiary (Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth known as “the Center”) is striving to “break down traditional business and data silos to create greater opportunity for social and economic inclusion.”
- The company refers to this as “inclusive growth.”
- There is a gap that exists that could benefit from using data to drive positive change: 500 million new consumers and 40 million new merchants.
- The Center believes that Mastercard can “play a critical role as a change agent to reduce the current gap.”
- The U.N.’s response to this move — paraphrasing here from the Forbes piece — there are a ton of people, organizations, and governments that are in the dark about the power of data, the information it contains, and the knowledge of how to use it.
- A new(ish) term enters the bigger data narrative: “Data Philanthropy” a term that couples data collaboration and data sharing.
- This mantra is at the heart of what Mastercard’s Center is aimed to do.
Mastercard is committing to amazingly innovative initiatives using data to reshape not only the company’s perception, but also to go above making a buck or two and using data to fuel the change many need.
We expect to be further unfolding this conversation in every way possible as it combines many of our favorite things to nerd out about: data, social good, using data to invoke that social good, and the power of collaboration.
