Business analytics and big data research in information systems

Business analytics and big data have been at the center of interest for researchers and practitioners for almost a decade now. The methods and processes that comprise business analytics, combined with the rich information that can be extracted from big data have enabled organizations to generate rich insight which is critical to decision making. The scientific inquiry in this interdisciplinary domain has had a long and successful history at the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS). We provide a synthesis of prominent themes that have appeared during the past decade within the “Business Analytics and Big Data” track of ECIS. Based on the synthesis, we provide a narrative of how the field has evolved, as well as where we see future research efforts being focused. Specifically, we identify three areas that are likely to attract considerable research interest in the years to come. Within each of these three areas, we describe several key challenges that need to be addressed. We conclude with an overview of the six articles included in this special issue, and a description of how they contribute to our understanding of this domain.