Big Data MBA

Introduction

I never planned on writing a second book. Heck, I thought writing one book was enough to check this item off my bucket list. But so much has changed since I wrote my first book that I felt compelled to continue to explore this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for organizations to leverage data and analytics to transform their business models. And I'm not just talking the “make me more money” part of businesses. Big data can drive significant “improve the quality of life” value in areas such as education, poverty, parole rehabilitation, health care, safety, and crime reduction.

My first book targeted the Information Technology (IT) audience. However, I soon realized that the biggest winner in this big data land grab was the business. So this book targets the business audience and is based on a few key premises:

• Organizations do not need a big data strategy as much as they need a business strategy that incorporates big data.
• The days when business leaders could turn analytics over to IT are over; tomorrow's business leaders must embrace analytics as a business discipline in the same vein as accounting, finance, management science, and marketing.
• The key to data monetization and business transformation lies in unleashing the organization's creative thinking; we have got to get the business users to “think like a data scientist.”
• Finally, the business potential of big data is only limited by the creative thinking of the business users.

I've also had the opportunity to ...