Using Big Data technology effectively, such as Map/Reduce or NoSQL, has two components: technical skills and high level expertise.  An article in Harvard Business Review, January 2013, entitled How IT Fumbles Analytics, stated "Improving how businesses extract value from data requires more than analytical tools. It involves creating an environment where people can use the company's data and their own knowledge to improve the firm's operational and strategic performance."

Data…

A while back I was running a data mining project for a customer and made a conversational blunder. In one of the meetings, I mentioned seeing one interesting relationship in the data. Customers who purchased one particular product tended to buy and implement a second product at a later time. I did not realize that Everyone in the room INTUITIVELY knew that there is absolutely no relationship between the two products. A big blunder. After the meeting, two friends told me that my standing in…

This blog entry continues the topic of how a Data Scientist can convince colleagues to become more data driven.  The previous blog covered office politics.  This entry covers integration with the strategy and, more specifically, the process that creates the company's strategy.

Every company is unique and consequently so is its strategy process. At first glance, research on how companies develop strategies is complex and contradictory. There are simply too many ways to go about it:…

Have you ever found yourself trying to convince a group of people to become more data driven and meeting a LOT of resistance?



First, understand that this is normal.  Second, understand that there are things you can do about it. This resistance exists because of factors at the personal and the organizational levels. People have existing plans based on their own assumptions.  People, including you and me, make decisions on incomplete information.  Without complete information,…