Minding the Machines

CHAPTER 5Future of Business Analytics

This book has referenced and quoted a broad range of great thinkers and leaders including Frederick Taylor, William Penn, Bertrand Russell, Peter Drucker, Ben Franklin, Yogi Berra, and Colin Powell. These individuals have, through either deep study or a semi-accidental remark, shared an insight that has maintained significance and relevance. People often consider these people (at least some of them) as heroic in their sagaciousness, choosing to intentionally disregard the full picture of their person. Many had decidedly nonheroic notions around what we would now consider basic human rights or maintained habits that would be bizarre to contemporary readers. We can assume, with perhaps a little hubris, that if these great thinkers had reflected deeply and considered their presuppositions, they would come to the same place we are. The ideas that we consider offensive or clearly false seem obvious to us, but given their lived experience and the accepted knowledge of their time, they were simply taken as axiomatic. It is safe to assume that in the future our conventional wisdom around data science and analytics will be similarly considered anachronistic and inexplicable. What will future business leaders think of this time, when data science and analytics was in its infancy? What will we be embarrassed that we missed in 20 years? How will our strategies and processes hold up over time? What technologies will rise, and which will fade? What ...