Book excerpt: This book is a wonderful collection of chapters that posits how managers need to cope in the Big Data era. It highlights many of the emerging developments in technologies, applications, and trends related to management’s needs in this Big Data era. —Dr. Jay Liebowitz, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology This book presents some meaningful work on Big Data analytics and its applications. Each chapter generates helpful guidance to the readers on Big Data analytics and its applications, challenges, and prospects that is necessary for organizational strategic direction. —Dr. Alex Koohang, Middle Georgia State University Big Data is a concept that has caught the attention of practitioners, academicians, and researchers. Big Data offers organizations the possibility of gaining a competitive advantage by managing, collecting, and analyzing massive amounts of data. As the promises and challenges posed by Big Data have increased over the past decade, significant issues have developed regarding how data can be used for improving management. Big Data can be understood as large amounts of data generated by the Internet and a variety of connected smart devices and sensors. This book discusses the main challenges posed by Big Data in a manner relevant to both practitioners and scholars. It examines how companies can leverage Big Data analytics to act and optimize the business. This book brings together the theory and practice of management in the era of Big Data. It offers a look at the current state of Big Data, including a comprehensive overview of both research and practical applications. By bringing together conceptual thinking and empirical research on the nature, meaning, and development of Big Data in management, this book unifies research on Big Data in management to stimulate new directions for academic investigation as well as practice.