This special issue of Knowledge@HEC highlights several research projects and teaching initiatives at HEC Paris in the context of big data and business analytics. Nowadays it does not take much to convince students or managers alike of the importance of data for businesses. As Wedel and Kannan (2016) put it, “data is the oil of the digital economy”. Indeed, data is completely transforming organizations, and data-driven decision making is becoming more and more a part of a company’s core. In an increasing digital world, all of us are walking data generators, leaving long data trails: we have more data on everything.