“If” by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

     Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,  

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;  

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to…

In my most recent blog “Design Thinking Humanizes Data Science”, I discussed how Design Thinking and Data Science complement each other.  They are not just two sides of the same coin, but the same side of the same coin in their objectives to “diverge before converging” in driving business stakeholder collaboration with respect to identifying, brainstorming and…

The article “Cognitive Hub:  The Future of Work” and the supporting infographic (see Figure 1) provides an interesting perspective on some “technology combinations” that could transform the workplace of the future, all enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI):

• AI + Internet of Things (IoT) yields workplace decision support
• AI + Human-machine Interaction…

A report from Accentureclearly highlights those companies that don’t want to capitalize on AI will not survive the future (see Figure 1).  Adopt or die.  Yippee Ki Yay, Mr. Falcon.…

For my final class this year at the University of San Francisco School of Management, I taught the students using nothing but infographics.  Not only was it fun for me, but I think the students enjoyed being able to summarize their learnings from the semester through group discussions centered around the infographics.  The infographics provide a visual opportunity to meld the three fundamental concepts that I believe every business leader needs to understand to be…

I’m missing my Thursday evening Big Data MBA classes at the University of San Francisco School of Management (though I expect my students are glad that ordeal is over).  One of my biggest learnings from this semester was around how to properly construct an actionable and measurable business hypothesis.  One of the common mistakes is starting with an overly-simplified business objective such as:

• Improve customer subscription renewals by…

Gartner recently published a report titled “CIO Agenda 2019: Exploit Transformational Technologies” that states the following:

“Whether it’s AI, quantum computing or conversational platforms, digital business is underpinned by technology. But with a seemingly endless amount of technologies to invest in, where are CIOs focused?”…

The opportunity to watch and coach the University of San Francisco (USF) students during our annual Hackathon with our friends at Good Dataprobably taught me as much as it taught the students. The lessons learned I’ll share here will not only benefit future classes, but my customers.  It also gives me an opportunity to make special mention of one Hackathon team that really delivered the goods!…

It’s that time of year again when I look into the Crystal Skull…er, ball, and make some predictions of the continuing challenges and new trends I foresee in Big Data and Data Science for the coming year.

It’s Data “Business Model” Transformation, not Digitalization

Digital Transformation moves beyond just…

The third annual University of San Francisco (USF) MBA class Golden State Warriors analytics exercise provided an opportunity to test the students’ ability to “Think Like a Data Scientist” with respect to identifying and quantifying variables that might be better predictors of performance for the Golden State Warriors professional basketball team. This was also an opportunity to test and fine-tune the Hypothesis Development Canvas, and boy was that an eye-opener for me. The…

My last University of San Francisco School of Management class of the semester is coming up this week. However instead of a normally boring presentation from me to cap the semester, we are going to review a few infographics to summarize our lessons from the semester. 

I also want to use this blog to give credit to Arielle Winchester for her creativity and patience to work with me in the construction of these infographics.  Here are my Top 10 infographics from…

Design is very easy to comprehend when you are building customer-centric products or services. Heck, it makes total sense to start from the customer perspective and to use the multitude of design thinking techniques to identify, validate, value and prioritize customers’ most important needs.  We got Personas, Journey Maps, Storyboards, Prototypes, Mockups, Canvases and such to help us intimately understand our customers, their environments and what it is they are trying to…

I recently had the great opportunity to keynote the Analytics Institute of Ireland’s annual conference.  The event was marvelous!  Over 500 attendees, outstanding presentations from an impressive lineup of presenters, and heavy engagement from the participants before, during and after my keynote.

Lorcan Malone, CEO of…

In the blog “Data Science ‘Paint by the Numbers’ with the Hypothesis Development Canvas,” I introduced the Hypothesis Development Canvas as a tool for linking an organization’s data science activities with the organization’s strategic business initiatives (see Figure 1). …

Many of my MBA students are perplexed about how much data science capabilities and skills they need in order to get hired.  It appears that in many job interviews, employers are looking for students who have both business subject matter as well as data science expertise. Here is an example of such a conversation:

MBA Student: I get lots of questions about my data science skills. I don't understand the need for that from me. I will never be as good as a…

I’m a big fan of Woody Allen’s earlier movies such as “Bananas”, “Sleeper” and especially the award winning “Annie Hall.”  One of the things that always impressed me about Woody Allen was his ability to reframe the conversation in a way that was both provocative and creative. For example in the movie “Annie Hall”, there is a scene where Annie Hall (played by Diane Keaton) and Alvy Singer (played by Woody Allen) are sitting with their respective psychoanalysts when they are both asked…

 When I was a kid, I use to love “Paint by the Numbers” sets.  Makes anyone who can paint or color between the lines a Rembrandt or Leonardo da Vinci (we can talk later about the long-term impact of forcing kids to “stay between the lines”).

Well, the design world is applying the “Paint by the Numbers” concept using design canvases. …

Social media and internet search scare me because it is so easy to acquire information without also acquiring the associated knowledge. It’s easy to find almost any information via search or social media, but an effective “student of data scientist” (as well as any effective future leader) must learn to discern easily acquired information with a sense of skepticism. To quote the character Dr. Ian Malcolm (played skillfully by Jeffrey Goldblum) in the movie “Jurassic Park:”…