Big Data, Big Innovation: Enabling Competitive Differentiation through Business Analytics

Preface

Writing is an interesting pursuit; where you start is rarely where you end up. This is my third book and while not originally intended to be a trilogy, things seemed to have panned out that way.

My first book, The Value of Business Analytics, was written for the “doers,” the people responsible for making things happen. It tried to answer the fundamental question people kept asking me: “Why don’t people get this?”

My second book, Delivering Business Analytics, was written for the “designers,” the people responsible for working out how things should happen. It opened the kimono, provided solutions to 24 common organizational problems, and laid the framework to identify and replicate best practices. It tried to answer the next question people kept asking me: “I know what I need to do, but how do I do it?”

This book is written for the “decision makers” and aims to answer the final question: “How do I innovate?”

There are countless models out there. Many are useful, including the ones presented in this book. Most try to make everyone follow the same approach. However, business analytics works best when it’s unique to the organization that leverages it. Differentiation means being different, something that’s all too often overlooked. Rather than just trying to copy, I hope you use the models in this book to create your own source of innovation.

I hope you find as much enjoyment reading this book as I had writing it.

Things move quickly. There’s always more case studies, more ...