TL;DR: Be a human first, a manager second. Source *** I’m Christopher Berry.I tweet about analytics @cjpberryI write at christopherberry.ca
Author: Christopher Berry
Hank: “In order to be #1 in the iced cream confectionery industry, we need to gross $475 Million next year.” Jack: “Assuming that we continue to grow at the rate that we are, we expect revenue to gross $310 Million next year.” Hank: “Impossible. Your forecast must be wrong!” Jack: “Why do you think that?” Hank: “Because your forecast doesn’t help us hit $475 Million! It has got to be wrong!” There are many methods that marketing scientists use to talk about the future. These include: Projection of current trends forward into the future Generation of a model to explain current trends and projecting that model forward Backcasting Scenario analysis Simulation Hank is disappointed because Jack delivered a projection of[…]
I took in The Avengers this weekend. The data visualization was pretty amazing, complete with very impressive information architecture. Half of a scene was done through a screen. Bruce Banner worked on simulation for about a 20 seconds, and with a single hand gesture, swiped it across the room to Stark’s screen. Stark immediately began working with it. That swipe took all of 1 second. Currently, the amount of time it takes me to do the equivalent with a fellow data scientist is around 4 minutes. (Save, upload files to Duck, verbally say ‘it’s there’, download, open the application, load, run the script, render the view, continue). Many of the digital experiences were three dimensional and could be engaged with.[…]
The point of big data and data science is to: Understand why things happen the way they do Make predictions about the future Seems like an innocent statement? Oh no. No it isn’t. This matters. What’s the problem? Two different groups of people believe in two different things. It can’t be the case that both of the bullet points I stated can be simultaneously right, can it? Origins of the problem Technology emerged that made it possible to make predictions about the future without any understanding. Leo Breiman, towards the end of his life, saw this and then just let it rip. He wrote “Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures” for Statistical Science, 2001, (16), 3, 199-231.To summarize: It recently became[…]
If you’re in analytics, you should be keep a journal. Or call it a log or running commentary. This is something you keep in addition to your burn list. A journal helps you to: Remember what you explored Exploit more reliably Recall inspiration Some of the best people in analytics are great explorers. They experiment. They examine diversity. The analyze variation. They examine options in the context of systems. They’re great inductive thinkers because they had to learn the hard way to become inductive thinkers. Exploration, on its own, is a very high value activity, but also carries the biggest risk. It’s also the riskiest and the hardest to explain to those who do not explore. Exploration is an attempt[…]
How can you tell if a strategy is working? You measure it of course. To understand what you’re trying to measure, you have to understand the strategy. If you can draw a Strategic Activity System, you can align a measure to each of the outcomes. Take a Strategy Activity System and align an indicator against it. If it can’t be measured directly, what proxy measures are available? That’s the creative aspect of KPI design. Sometimes tricky. Often imperfect. Are the activities that the firm is doing, marketing or otherwise, yielding the benefits that you believe them to be? For instance – are your fares really lower? Are your on-time departures really higher than the competition. Are consumers more loyal? Don’t[…]
You may recall the ArtScience term from 2009. It appears, based on that Google Trend line, that it briefly came back in late 2010 / early 2011. ArtScience, in a marketing, is the combining of Art and Science at the same time. It is not, as some creative agencies have claimed, the utilization of data somewhere at the beginning of the creative cycle. An ArtScience Groupe is hypothetical because it doesn’t exist in practice. You just can’t bolt on science in the upfront and expect the tyranny of the gut to adjust. Placing it upfront certainly gives the creative director the power to ignore what’s being said. But that isn’t collaboration in a manner that generates more or better novel[…]
Last week, I described a framework you can use to express strategic choice. A key component of that framework is the Strategic Activity System. It gives you, the reader, a way to quickly understand the activities that make a difference and how they connect to generate advantages that are very difficult for others to copy. Check out the strategic activity system for WAWTO evenings. WAWTO is a small event in Toronto. There’s no cost to attend, limited commercials, it has awesome people sharing real stories about analytics, and, it’s marketed entirely through WOM and organic. These four advantages are realized by hosting at no-cost venues, typically pubs, which feature beer and wine, that all contributes to real storytelling. One of[…]
eMetrics is a conference about digital marketing optimization. It’s about marketing analytics.You meet many great people who are doing great things at eMetrics. I talked to progressives from Monster and Workopolis, disruptors at Rogers and Expedia, marketers from J&J and MacLaren, scientific marketers at Intuit, and open data leaders from Translink. There were experts – real experts (not just handwaving big talkers, real ones) – in big data, design thinking, and data science. They paneled. And they were on hand to talk one on one.These conferences are awesome because they inspire. Great people talking about wondrous things are inspiring. As Jim Sterne pointed out by way of this Google Trend snapshot below. The United States is fifth in searching –[…]
This week, I pitched three books that help me formulate analytics strategy. They are: The Origin of Wealth, Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics. On Competition. Business Model Generation. I’ve written summaries of the key points on previous days. Now, I’m going to bring them all together. Strategy is: A design, that; Enumerates choices,which; If architected with complementary and reinforcing choices results in; Sustainable competitive advantage against predators who; Want to destroy your firm. Concretely: Design is created by agents. We know from Beinhocker that agents “use inductive rules of thumb to make decisions; have incomplete information, are subject to errors and biases; learn and adapt over time.” (PP. 97). It’s conceivable, and even likely, that if you[…]