By Sheela Linstrum

Within the sleek concrete auditorium of Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zurich’s (HWZ’s) architecturally-distinguished building, 70+ individuals from academia and industry gathered to explore the interplay of big data and ethics.  The conference tackled this theme from a range of perspectives, provoking a series of questions: why should we care about big data?; how do we obtain it?; how can we use big data to price goods and services?; is it ethical to use big data for profit?; how does big data create opportunities?; and is all this legal?

Freeman engages the Big Data: Little Ethics Conference audience.
Ed Freeman engages the Big Data: Little Ethics Conference audience.

The range of topics and dynamism of the presenters inspired much reflection amongst attendees.  The format allowed participants to ask questions and challenge assumptions, both of the presenters and of each other.  Engagement reached its peak during Darden Professors Ed Freeman’s and Bobby Parmar’s presentation.  Relying on Darden’s case method teaching style, Freeman and Parmar presented the audience with a series of plausible and ethically-ambiguous mini cases to provoke discussion and challenge audience members.

In addition to serious reflection on big data, there were also plenty of laughs.  To highlight the implications of spurious correlations – or data correlations that identify data trends which are not actually linked – HWZ Professor Karl Schmedders jocosely accused the audience of causing the financial crisis in Greece because of a spurious correlation between Greece’s economic behavior and Facebook usage trends over time. Darden Professor Raj Venkatesan joked about being a slow runner and his complete disinterest in publicizing his running stats on Facebook (a joke later seized upon by Darden Professors Freeman and Parmar in what became an enjoyable running gag).  And HWZ Professor Marcel Blattner, at the end of his talk, ended his presentation with a slide that simply said “Wake up J.”

Co-hosted by HWZ and Darden, this event represents a shared effort between the two schools and highlights the value of collaboration across international borders.  The format, which included faculty presenters from both Darden and HWZ as well as industry leaders, resulted in a particularly stimulating series of presentations and actionable ideas.  While this event was co-hosted by the two business schools, this conference was also generously sponsored by Accenture and the Swiss Association for Marketing (GFM).  HWZ’s media partner, Handelszeitung, also supported this event by providing local media coverage.

For more information about this event, please see the Darden press release.

Bobby Parmar, Michael Grund, Raj Venkatesan, and Ed Freeman at the Big Data: Little Ethics networking reception.
Bobby Parmar, Michael Grund, Raj Venkatesan, and Ed Freeman at the Big Data: Little Ethics networking reception.