Big Data and Business: Tech mining to capture business interests and activities around Big Data

Innovations around "Big Data" can be characterized in terms of rapid technology development and deployment dynamics. For this purpose, combining "tech mining" (extraction of usable intelligence) from publication and patent databases with tech mining of business-related databases can elucidate activities and interests of business communities regarding Big Data innovation pathways. In this paper, we focus on commercially oriented databases-- ABI/INFORM as a source from which to extract business intents. We select the database to help gauge "hot topics" in industry with regard to Big Data. Our results show that certain types of firms can be clustered into thematic groups relating to Big Data discussions and activities. In the paper we demonstrate that such analyses can illuminate themes being pursued by businesses. Like social media analyses, this text mining can provide useful intelligence to inform more in-depth investigation mobilizing other data sources and techniques.