Exclusive Interview with Arwa Mrad, Software Developer Racing Unleashed
Data and data analysis are at the core of any innovative businesses, says Arwa Mrad, Software Developer at Racing Unleashed. Read now the full interview and find out why innovation is so important.
What does innovation mean to you?
I feel like innovation is often mixed-up with the term invention. Innovation is not necessarily a break-through. I understand it as the creation of something either new or as a change made to an existing product. Creating the first telephone, is an invention. Making this telephone smaller or wireless, is an innovation.
Furthermore, an innovation could be a new product (something concrete), but it can also be a new way of doing something or even a new way of thinking.
It’s a very complex term. To summarize, innovation can be: Completely new, in this case, it’s an invention, or an improvement / evolution of an existing Product / service. It can be Product or simply a service / an idea.
What does innovation stand for in terms of Racing Unleashed?
I would say that the ideas behind RU’s main business are quite innovative:
The idea of having yearly challenges with official e-racers, tracks, virtual setups like F1, is quite new and different from anything else in the sim racing world.
Making the sim racing accessible to the public rather than having this holistic idea of “F1” being something so special from any normal person—is innovative
A lot of other aspects, like trying to link this experience to physical sport/fitness can be considered as innovative ways of thinking, of marketing and targeting.
To summarize this, it’s rather the whole setup, the way this business is being brought to the market and the idea behind it. Putting this in-place, though, might need a little more reshaping to give this idea the credits and attention it deserves.
What does data analysis/big data mean in connection with RU?
In general, Data and data analysis are at the core of any innovative businesses. It is only with data that we can understand customer behaviors, cluster them in different groups, understand their motives, and discover market trends and customer preferences. Thanks to that, an organization can not only target the right people, but also improve its business or even unlock and create new lines of business. The benefits may include more effective marketing, customer personalization and improved operational efficiency. At RU, now, we are at the first level of basic data usage of the data we hold.
But the topic of data at RU should go beyond this, to become a business goal on its own. Data should be used to predict and prescribe too. From the level of a single driver’s performance to the level of “predicting new business lines” based on our customer’s patterns. To take it a notch further, we can even use data to attract drivers. Data is addictive, when you go for a run, you like to see how many steps, how fast per km you are, what your heart rate is… you get very easily eager to run more, because you want to compare numbers.