I guess I could have done today’s post about how we’re hiring, but I already wrote a post about that on our blog. So today we’re going to talk about something completely different. Big Data Analytics. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Opera Solutions is a company that “combines human expertise with advanced capabilities in analytics, technology and data management to offer Big Data Analytics as an ongoing service to leading organizations in industry and government.” They’re located in New York, NY; Jersey City, NJ; San Diego, CA; London, UK; Paris, France; New Delhi, India; and Shanghai, China. I know it’s kind of hard to get a grasp on the kind of problems that Opera Solutions solves, but luckily they’ve provided an awesome example. They put together a team to work on the Netflix Prize, a contest that offered a $1 million prize for a solution that would “substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to enjoy a movie based on their movie preferences.” Opera Solutions’ team ended up tying for first, but just barely missed out on winning the prize.
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doesn’t hurt—by the way, I think it’s now 
. It’s a great follow-up to the original 
, and it once again shows how changing your mindset can lead you to all kinds of new ideas (this is a really important lesson for job seekers). One of the companies that is mentioned in the book is Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, WA based invention company. They’re all about ideas. Things like product design, product development, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and service all come later, and Intellectual Ventures doesn’t want anything thing to do with those processes. They just invent, invent, invent. The company isn’t tied to one specific area—they’re working on problems like stopping Malaria, preventing hurricanes, and counteracting negative effects from climate change should they ever happen. 
