The effects of Big Data Analysis on the University Management in Improving Innovation and Technology Based Investments and Purchases

Universities in the last decade should be more strategic in their purchasing since the importance of innovation and technology-based investment has markedly increased. The reduction and the decrease in the university budget have also made this issue inevitable. Therefore, the university administrations have preferred to use big data mining, analyses, and management to make long-term strategic investments on innovation and technology while they are systematically controlling their other procurements. In this study, therefore, the higher education institutions in Turkey have been analyzed, particularly in the areas of innovation and technology-oriented investments and purchases. The effects of the big data mining, analyses, and management have been taken into consideration in order to improve the impacts of these investments at the universities. It is important for the university management to increase the innovation and technology by doing right investments and procurements. Hence, the perception of university managers on this subject had been critically analyzed taking into account their experiences and problems faced in innovation and technology development. The top university managers (12) were chosen from the two public universities in particular. The interviews were conducted with them on innovation and technology-based investments and acquisitions by using data mining, analyses, and management. By using well-structured phenomenological research method, the collected data were analyzed and clustered for NVivo 10. The results of the research have showed that in order to have sustainable growth, success, and quality assurance at the universities by making innovation and technology based investments, all the participants agreed that the big data mining, analyses, and management were needed even though they had expressed their concerns. Most of the participants had mentioned that they did not have well-rounded and deep knowledge and experience in big data mining, analyses, and management, while some of them had clarified that they were aware about the best practices of the big data mining, analyses, and management in innovation and technology based investments. As the participants had pointed out that they had faced big problems in innovation and technology based procurements since they did not have any short and long-term vision related to the investments. For that reason, the participants clearly mentioned that they could control the investments and procurements by using big data mining, analyses, and management. Additionally, as the participants had shared that the common inventory could be used in order to control effectively and efficiently the investments by developing big data mining, analyses, and management. As a result, big data mining, analyses, and management could be used as soon as possible at the universities in order to increase exponentially the innovation and technology-based investments and in critical purchases.