We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to address one of modern society’s biggest challenges – the choice between healthcare or the economy.  For the past several decades, we have treated this as an “either or” choice between one or the other; that to improve the economy we must reduce healthcare spending or to improve healthcare we must sacrifice the economy.  To that sort of thinking I say BULL!

The coronavirus COVID-19 situation is showing us a very…

Much like we have Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, it is time to formalize of field of Data Engineering.  This is a special two-part series on trends and requirements leading to the formalization of the Field of Data Engineering.

“Data is the new oil…in much the same way that oil fueled economic growth in the 20^th century, data will fuel economic growth in the 21^st century.”

To further raise…

As I write this blog, we are still in the early stages of the coronavirus crisis.  It is a scary situation which has caused hoarding, panic, fake news, lies, stock market turmoil and irrational behaviors.  All indications suggest we will survive this crisis, but it is truly not one of mankind’s best moments.

But learnings abound in…

I’ve had several folks tell me that if I can’t convert the “effects” in the Schmarzo "Economic Digital Asset Valuation Theorem” into mathematical equations, that my quest for a Nobel Prize in Economics would be greatly hindered.  So, I enlisted the help of my senior data science team of Wei Lin, Mauro Damo and Yong Zhang to help me address this problem (they were only diverted from small projects related to preserving our rainforests, improving healthcare and reducing carbon…

We all know how horror movies work: there is someone evil in the neighborhood (like Michael Myers in “Halloween” or Freddy Krueger in “Nightmare on Elm Street” or Tom Cruise in “War of the Worlds”) and the soon-to-be-victim, we’ll say in this case, an unassuming CEO, wanders into a dark space (basement, closet, wood shed, attic) where the evil doer is waiting for them with a new agenda for the digital enterprise they can’t assimilate and they perish.

Slash! Cut! Gouge! Scream!…

“We are too busy building the solution to bother the customer to identify, validate, value and prioritize their requirements.” – Name not disclosed to protect the ignorant

I see this habit all the time with experienced people; the tendency to jump right into solution mode when dealing with customers. Many of these experienced “experts” have seen the “problem” so many times before, that they just “know” the right solution. Heck, sometimes these “experts” even cut off or…

“Begin with an end in mind” – Stephen Covey “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

No truer words have ever been spoken.  A simple phrase that makes everyone’s life easier and more productive.  Our data science team tries to live by that simple phrase, but it’s difficult because we want to jump right into “solution mode” …we have seen so many similar problems, that we already know and understand how to solve that problem.  And that’s an…

Money on the Table..MOTT.  When I was the Vice President of Advertiser Analytics at Yahoo, this became a key focus guiding the analytics that we were delivering to advertisers to help them optimize their spend across the Yahoo ad network. Advertisers had significant untapped advertising and marketing spend into which we were not tapping because we could not deliver audience, content and campaign insights to help them spend that money with us.  And the MOTT was…

I am a believer that the pathway to innovation must end with putting a product or service into the market that provides economic value to customers, economics the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. Innovation is about economics and economics is about value creation. It’s about the 4M’s…Make Me More Money!

Products or services that never reach the market may have been great ideas, but you can’t pay the mortgage or buy your Venti Chai…

The Economic Value Curve is a measure of the relationship between a dependent variable and independent variables to achieve a particular outcome such as retain customers, increase operational uptime, or optimize inventory. The Economic Value Curve measures the impact that increasing or decreasing one of the independent variables has on the dependent variable. In Figure 1, for example, if we want to improve the dependent variable “Uptime %” then we need to spend more on the independent…

I am always looking for examples to bolster my University of San Francisco “Economic Value of Data” research efforts, and I think I’ve found a good one. The NHO article “Is value creation with data something Norway can live off of?” states that Norway believes that 1) the financial or economic value that Norway will be able to extract from data is on a par with the oil, while 2) the value of data is even more important than oil when considering the broader society…

Sometimes it just takes a simple, provocative statement to kick-off the innovation process – to remove an everyday given like driving a car or possessing a landline phone or centralizing all of your data in the cloud – to fuel the innovation process. Henrik Christensen, director of University San Diego's Contractual Robotics Institute, issued such a provocative statement:

“My own prediction is that kids born today will never get to drive a car.”

I have recently been…

Imagine this scenario:

You enter your dentist’s office as a follow-up visit to the 6-month checkup you had last week. You’re nervous because the checkup revealed bleeding in your gums and cracks in your fillings, all things that require your dentist’s repair on this occasion.

So, you’re there nervously fidgeting in the lobby waiting for your name to be called, envisioning all sorts of dentistry implements of torture that will soon be…

Maybe the biggest challenge we face as a society is our ability to unlearn – to let go of – outdated concepts and beliefs in order to adopt new approaches. Our everyday lives are dominated by outdated concepts: change the oil every 3,000 miles, don’t wear white before Memorial Day, only senior management has the best ideas, don’t eat dessert until you’ve cleaned your plate, trade wars are easy to win, leeches work wonders on headaches, etc.

Well, I’m going to throw down the gauntlet…

Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) create an environment where design thinking skills are more valuable than data science skills? Will AI alter how we define human intelligence? Will AI actually force humans to become more human?

Okay, sounds questions one might expect from an episode of Rod Serling’s TV series “Twilight Zone” (which I preferred over the meaningless college football bowl games on New Year’s…

2019 was a year full of outstanding customer engagements and provocative teaching experiences across numerous universities.  My eyes were opened to many new opportunities to integrate economics, design thinking, big data and data science (AI / ML / DL) to further my case for a Nobel Prize in Economics (which I’d prefer not to be awarded posthumously).  That includes helping organizations:

• Monetize a digital asset (data) that never wears out, never…

Several of my friends have challenged me to get involved in the AI ethics discussion. I certainly do not have any special ethics training. But then again, maybe I do. I’ve been going to church most Sundays (and not just on Christmas Eve) since I was a kid and have been taught a multitude of “ethics” lessons from the Bible. So, respectively, let me take my best shot at sharing my thoughts about the critical importance of the AI Ethics topic.

What is AI…

In a recent blog I stated that “Crossing the AI Chasm" is primarily an organizational and cultural challenge, not a technology challenge. That “Crossing the AI Chasm” not only requires organizational buy-in, but more importantly, necessitates creating a culture of adoption and continuous learning fueled at the front-lines of customer and/or operational engagement (see Figure 1).…

Ah, it’s that time of year when everyone is making predictions about next year and extrapolating from the previous year’s trends to create logical, pragmatic predictions. I’ve already made my own predictions for 2020 in the article, “AI, Analytics, Machine Learning, Data Science, Deep Learning Technology Main Developments in 2019 and Key Trends for 2020,”where I predicted the following

Main 2019 Developments:

• Growing "consumer proof points" with respect to AI…

AI is a game changer. Period. And being a data and analytics guy, I could not be more excited about it.

The McKinsey research study “Notes from the AI frontier: Applications and value of deep learning” provided some valuable insights into where and how Artificial Intelligence (i.e., Deep Learning / Neural Networks (CNNs, RNNs, GANs), Reinforcement Learning and Deep Reinforcement Learning) will derive and drive new sources of customer, product and…