Business Cultures That Will Make or Break Your Big Data Initiatives — Bill Schmarzo on People

Bill Schmarzo is the CTO of EMC's Big Data Consulting Practice and a frequent industry speaker, a blogger, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Management as well as an author. Schmarzo wrote "Big Data MBA: Driving Business Strategies with Data Science" and "Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business".

Show notes at http://hellotechpros.com/bill-schmarzo-people/

• The companies who are successful with Big Data addressed the cultural or people issues.
  • How do we get people engaged in the process so that we're delivering the analytics in a way that is actionable to our stakeholders?
• Many companies tend to start with implementing Hadoop and then waiting for magic to happen. It doesn't happen.
• Data science is really identifying the variables and metrics that MIGHT be a better predictor of performance.
  • "Might" is a license to be wrong and in many companies the idea of wrong is bad.
• In the BI space, the IT departments over promised and under deliveredwhich has lead business leaders to be skeptical of Big Data initiatives.
• You have to have a tight alignment between the business and IT to ensure that we are working on the right problems.
• Pick a topic / problem that business users find is important, focus on strategic business initiatives.
  • Create a link between business and data scientists.
• Create a culture of creativity across the whole organization.
  • Creativity is a contagious event.
  • All ideas are worthy of consideration.
  • We want people to be unafraid to be creative and sharing their ideas even if they may not work.
  • The best ideas come from front line.
  • Most large organizations struggle with protecting their own fiefdoms which leads to data silos.
• Big Data is not about big, its about small.
  • Learn as much as possible about individual person, event and situation instead of looking at the average of the data.
  • Aggregated data is the devil. You need to work with raw to serve the individual.
• Big Data initiatives tend to fail because the teams are focused on too many opportunities instead of being focused and priortizing the most important business problems.
  • Focus on one decision which has high value and high feasibility.
• Big Data is a team sport.
  • We need everyone involved, including the business, the IT and the data scientists.
  • Success breeds success. Quick wins will catch the attention of other people and build a grassroots movement.