There are so many opportunities to apply analytics today- it’s like being a mosquito in a nudist colony. I routinely see opportunities for analysis in my daily life. Perhaps I was born with the DNA to constantly collect data and evaluate for better outcomes. For example, which check-out line should I enter at the store? [...]
IIA Faculty Member Bill Franks, recently led an outstanding discussion titled, “What Makes a Great Analytic Professional”? Judging by the attendance and lively discussion, this was an important and timely discussion. Analytics Professionals Struggle to Hire Just Like Non-Analytics Professionals What struck me about this discussion is that analytics professionals (with the world of analytics [...]
Last week I spoke for IIA at Predictive Analytics World. Whereas I often speak to executives who aren’t yet persuaded of the virtues of analytics, at this gathering—which also included attendees of the Marketing Optimization Summit and Text Analytics World—that wasn’t the problem. I was preaching to the converted, who already undertake a wide variety [...]
What a change a few decades makes! When first starting my career as an analyst, I had no illusions about what I was getting into. I was choosing a field that most people didn’t enjoy or even understand. I knew I would get to work on neat analytical projects, but realized my role (and those [...]
What Does It Mean To Analytic Professionals? For my first blog posting, I decided to focus on one of the hottest topics in analytics right now: “Big Data”. Big Data is typically defined as very large, newer sources of data that don’t necessarily have a convenient or consistent structure. Think web logs, sensor data, RFID [...]
A series of examples highlighting the cross-pollination of analytical methods and ideas. Diversity fuels innovation. The joke about the physicist, chemist, and statistician also suggests that at times diversity impedes progress: These three scientists are called to a room where they see a fire in the wastebasket. The physicist says, “I know what to do! [...]
Cross posted at JTonEDM McKinsey just published a new study “Big Data: the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity” that is definitely worth reading. With lots of detail – it runs to more than 150 pages – it discusses why there is so much more data, what that means and how this data can [...]
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 [...]
Analytical Candidates You May Not Have Considered I’ve been thinking about the problems many of us have in recruiting analytical talent since IIA’s 2011 Predictions webinar. Talent acquisition and talent development are topics that tend to spark passionate debate; even Jim Goodnight and William Green spent time on the topic at their keynote during the [...]
Several years ago, we noticed some interesting new executive titles elevating the stature of analytics: Chief Analytics Officer and Chief Problem-Solving Officer. The CAO title even has a Wikipedia entry. In addition, other titles we have seen for a while are starting to span into more industries: Chief Scientist (not for your typical research organization, [...]
