How will the adoption rate of applying analytics accelerate? Who in an organization might emerge as the primary driver? Will it only be the CEO? Analytics is certainly embraced in functions such as marketing for customer and prospect analysis and as risk management. Is it possible that the CFO function might emerge as a key [...]
We tend to assume that executives want the right answers about what’s driving their businesses, and that they will gravitate toward analytics as a means to provide them. However, that isn’t always the case, and probably should never be assumed. Here’s an example. A few weeks ago, at a conference for financial executives interested in [...]
The health care reform debate is once again roiling the U.S. House of Representatives as the new Republican majority moves on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act passed just about a year ago. Their act is called the Repealing the Job Killing Health Care Act Bill and proponents of repeal say that doing [...]
A quick review of the many sustainability ratings and rankings makes it clear that it isn’t easy being sustainable — and it certainly isn’t easy to know who is best in class.
Analytics have long been essential to the credit business thought pre-bust they may have been most used to find every possible person to whom credit could be extended. Now, in these tighter times, analytics are being used to more accurately measure and mitigate risk. The Los Angeles Times reports that lenders and the firms that [...]
Analytics professionals should love the Obama administration. This is not a political statement (really). As the speculation machine cranks up in anticipation of the fall mid-term elections, much will be made of what has been accomplished by the current occupant of the White House and the Democrat-controlled Congress. Whether you are from the “Yes We [...]
The “Rolling Thunder Analytics Tour 2010” of Europe is over, and it was something of a blur. Eight cities in two weeks (counting Savannah, where I started week one). But despite my tiredness on the flight back home, it was a rich experience. I heard (and tried to respond to) perhaps a couple hundred questions [...]
Professor Thomas Davenport reports on analytics in Europe while delivering talks facilitated by Harvard Business Review and sponsored by SAS.
After another “Competing on Business Analytics” dinner sponsored by SAS and Accenture last night in Atlanta, what impressed me about analytics as a business resource is that it can support a very broad range of business strategies and conditions. Our two executive panelists were a great illustration of that range. David Dierker is the Vice [...]
Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air recently interviewed Ed Thorp, one of the original “celebrity quants” and Scott Patterson of the Wall Street Journal and author of the new book, The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It. “In 1962, Ed Thorp became every gambler’s favorite mathematician [...]
