(Ideation International: Farmington Hills, MI) -- Everyone is excited about becoming more innovative these days. Quality Digest columnist H.

Everyone has a passion, whether it involves biking the toughest roads or collecting Star Wars figurines. Mine is travel.

What happened to the good old show-me-the-money capitalistic down-and-dirty business I grew up with? Where’s the cutthroat competition? What happened to “we’re big, you’re not, we’re doing it our way” partnerships?

Editor's note: This is part two of a series about customer-centric quality management systems. Read part one here.

I learned recently of the passing earlier this year of a person I worked with 20 years ago at my last job in manufacturing. Manny S. was a “lesser god,” a term which is meant neither to canonize nor demean him.

From the increasing information transmitted through telecommunications systems to that analyzed by financial institutions or gathered by search engines and social networks, so-called “big data” is becoming a huge feature of modern life.