Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

This article was originally published by dataversity.net and can be viewed in full here

Randy Bean recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “Big Data represents a business adoption paradox: It promises speed, but successful business adoption takes time. When I advise executives or speak to business groups, I encourage organizations to view business transforming initiatives like Big Data as a journey. Success ultimately depends upon organizational alignment, process change, and people. Organizations need to develop a long-term plan and destination with many checkpoints along the way. True there are opportunities for “quick wins”– to ensure credibility, build organizational support, establish momentum, and secure funding—but for the most part, patience and persistence are essential.”

The challenge is that technology transformations come with great promise and excitement, which often lead to impatience and insistence on immediate results. Big Data brings big expectations. But most organizations that aspire to a data culture lack a strong data tradition.

The adoption of data and analytics in professional sports provides an illustrative example. As professional sports teams employed new data-driven techniques, and won as a result, the old guard came to appreciate the value of embedding data into decision-making processes on the field and in player selection and development. This is the kind of transformation, and accompanying shift in mindset, that assumes the form of a journey that plays out over years.

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