Data Scientists Gain Business Value from Data Mashups

Data scientists who do mashups from disparate data sources are able to gain deeper insights into problems and develop more comprehensive approaches toward attacking them by having a richer data set to work from. In turn, data mashups can help companies become more agile and speed time to market.

Consider the use of customer data.

Is There A Talent War?

Many sources say that although the economy is still recovering, and although so many people are still out of work, there is a disproportionate number of companies looking to hire people with specific talents, to fill analytic and strategic roles.

Is there a talent war? Or a talent disconnect?

If you missed our webinar on The Talent War, please visit our screencast, here: http://www.screencast.com/t/uZuxHyn88gd

C-level Execs: Big Data Means Big Value

Big data and analytics are top corporate, top-three corporate or top-10 corporate priorities in their organizations’ strategic agendas, according to 65% of 1,469 C-level executives taking part in a recentsurvey by McKinsey & Co.

Forty-four percent of the respondents say that they’re generating more value from big data and analytics than their competitors, while only 28% say the same for social tools or technologies.

An even larger share of executives in healthcare and pharma (56%) and business-to-consumer companies (50%) say the same about big data and analytics.

2.6 Trillion Pounds of Garbage: Where Does the World’s Trash Go?

The typical person in a developed country produces about 2.6 pounds of garbage a day. That would mean the average American man, weighing 175 pounds, produces his weight in trash every three months.

Where does it all go??

The Competitive Advantage of Doing More With Less

The great 18th century American statesman, inventor, diplomat, and author Benjamin Franklin instinctively knew what so many of us in the modern world have for­gotten: frugality and industriousness are the ways to wealth.

After the last set of business scandals and financial busts, many powerful interests, from governments to multination­al corporations, are exploring how to do more with less. Businesses and individuals are seeking a realignment of fru­gality and prosperity in hopes of regaining their balance and securing their futures. This need for competitive frugality impacts the near future value of your home, your family, your firm, and your shared future.

Tried and True. One and Done. Learning From Failures.

One of the frustrations I experience is when managers or analysts share with me that their organizations tried to implement progressive management methods, and they either failed or abandoned them. A prominent example is an unsuccessful attempt to implement activity-based costing to measure and manage costs and profit levels of products, services, channels and customers. Other enterprise performance management examples include risk management, customer analytics, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and the balanced scorecard.

What causes these failures or the quick loss of interest?

How Does Predictive Analytics Work?

As any fortune-teller will assure you, predicting the future is an art as well as a science. And that truism applies as much to business decisions as to any other aspect of life. So on the one hand we can say that predictive analytics is a branch of statistics in which information extrapolated from historical data is applied to the projection of future conditions. That’s the science side.

On the other hand, we can say that predictive analytics is using information you do have to compensate for information you don’t have (yet), in order to make better business decisions. That’s the artful part, and it can depend as much on intuition and imagination as on algorithms.

Bringing the two sides together successfully is “what’s new” in the practice of predictive analytics.

The Economic History of the Last 2,000 Years in 1 Little Graph

That headline is a big promise. But here it is: The economic history of the world going back to Year 1 showing the major powers’ share of world GDP, from a research letter written by Michael Cembalest, an analyst at JP Morgan.