Just imagine that you walked into a restaurant and are welcomed by the hotel staff. Later, one of the waiters directs you to a convenient seat, tells you their special dishes, and helps you order food by understanding your preference. He makes sure that you are attended well, serves you good food, and asks your feedback before you leave. It is a…

Real estate is changing. Not only are investors and technology companies such as Zillow expecting the market to favor buyers in 2020, new innovations are going to drive forward a changing landscape in 2019.

In the U.S., analysts are predicting that the value of consumer homes will rise for one more year, up to 5.9%, until the market…

Is innovation an artisanal feat? Can innovation be weighed, measured on a scale, and optimized like a production operation? Can the use of data analytics disrupt creativity as it has done in other business functions? As an innovation consultant specialized in data science, I see the power of data and creativity going hand-in-hand every day. To understand how this happens, we will have to start with the evolution of innovation analytics.

Early life of innovation…

Contrary to surveys conducted by the OECD, which indicate that the rate of innovation among small Israeli manufacturers is roughly 45%, a study conducted at Israel shows that more than 95% of businesses have promoted some type of innovation in the last three years.

The prevailing perception that innovation skips small businesses in general is shattered by a research conducted at Ben Gurion University. The study included meetings with more than 200 small business…

A lot of times when the prevalent industry trends are discussed among industry folks, there are usually two directions in which the conversation goes. It is either varying states of disbelief at the rate of change within the business and IT landscapes; or it is enthusiastic agreement on the importance of moving with the times and adopting a digital infrastructure.…

When talking to clients about their business goals, most business executives are pretty clear as to what they want to accomplish, such as reducing customer churn or reducing inventory costs or improving quality of care or improving product line profitability. But these “one dimensional” business initiatives really don’t push the organization’s innovative thinking. For example, I can easily reduce marketing costs if I significantly reduce advertising and promotional spending. Or I can easily…

At first there were a lot of different opinions, but now, almost everybody agrees that big data was able to take over the whole business world. A lot of businesses are relying on it and improving the tools they use for taming big data on a daily basis. They all agree that the importance of big data is huge and that everyone who wants to stay competitive in the business world…

The term Big Data is no longer a buzzword, it’s become an institution, and businesses all over the world are hiring Data Scientists, Chief Data Officers and the like to help them make sense of it all. But Big Data shouldn’t be thought of some scary, untouchable thing. We’ve been collecting data for decades and Big Data is well, just more of it.

Considering we now have a lot more data coming in, day on day, how best can we make it work for us? The first step is to ensure that the data…

This blog is about the peculiar nature in which software sometimes gets developed. I hope that many readers will recognize the relevance of data science in the examples taken from my own projects. I propose that development is the product of creativity more than accreditation. Creativity is something complicated that interacts with a person over his or her life circumstances. Many people know how to write . . . sentences and paragraphs. However, the ability to write well does not necessarily…

Data Mining and Cookie Butter