BASF, Dow, DuPont, Honeywell and the rest of the American Chemistry Council's member companies have pledged to implement 11 industry best practices to evaluate and improve their product safety performance.

Big data may seem to promise big insights to users, but more isn't always better, cautions statistician Nate Silver, who became one of America's most well-known faces of data analysis after his FiveThirtyEight blog accurately predicted 2012 presidential election results in all 50 states.

There have been plenty of predictions about the "bring your own device" trend, but that's not stopping Gartner from making a few more. Gartner's latest research shows 38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016 and half of companies will mandate BYOD by 2017.

The way suppliers are typically segmented may work well for prioritizing procurement resources on supplier selection, managing supplier performance, and supporting and developing strategic suppliers. But it doesn't always work well for prioritizing resources on risk management and compliance. Many B and C suppliers may be easily switched, but still represent large material risks to the company (such as litigation or regulatory fines).