Small data to Big Data: The Information Systems (IS) continuum

Since the beginning of the 20^th century and the emergence of modern business, organisations large and small have increasingly struggled to get to grips with the rising tide of their critical data. This led to a period during the 1970s and 1980s where much focus was directed towards managing information as a specific activity, increasingly carried out by experts. The 1990s brought the notion of knowledge management (KM), the knowledge organisation and subsequently the knowledge society. However since the turn of the decade, IS researchers have again turned their attention to the specific issue of dealing with unprecedented volumes of data. This new tidal wave has been referred to as 'Big Data' - large volumes of data amassed for organisations, requiring extensive storage, management, processing and analytic capabilities. Through a review of seminal literature, this paper proposes an Information Systems (IS) continuum defined primarily as a factor of time, phenomenological focus and developments in technology which conceptualises Big Data as a natural extension of the data, information and knowledge continuum. Based on this proposal, the paper considers the implications of this formalisation for IS researchers.