Analytics, AI and Big Data Leadership

‘Data’ has attracted a glut of negative headlines recently as stories of misuse (think Facebook/Cambridge Analytica and AT&T) and cyber theft (Panama Papers and Marriott International) have cast an unwelcome shadow.

Notwithstanding the bad press, big data – albeit regulated and secured – can be hugely beneficial, improving business performance and enhancing our quality of life. However, big data and AI are very new technologies and misuse followed by better regulation will be part of a steep learning curve.

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Join Leading with Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence at Kellogg School of Management to gain the working knowledge needed to lead in a data-driven world

Dates: April 15-19 and September 16-20, 2019

Format: In-class study │ Location: Evanston, IL

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Businesses equally face a period of learning. To take full advantage of the technology and build it into many areas of business practice, business leaders need to think of data analytics and AI as part of their repertoire and as a priority for managers across the organization rather than something contained in a specialist silo.

Leaders are the ones responsible for making strategic decisions based on the data, so they should be the gatekeepers when it comes to deciding how data can add value to their business.

Florian Zettelmeyer, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School and faculty director of the Leading with Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intellegence program believes that every leader needs a working knowledge of data science. “You don’t really need to be great at math or at stats or computer science to obtain a working knowledge,” he says, “it is really a way of disciplined thinking that needs some practice but that fundamentally does not need a lot of technical background. Therefore, it is acquirable by people who have succeeded in the business world, precisely for the fact that they are good analytical thinkers.”

The Kellogg program equips leaders with this working knowledge. It enables them to lead big data initiatives, assemble the team and resources needed to drive data analytics, and encourage data literacy across their organizations.

The learning explains why analytics requires managerial judgement and how, by applying sound judgement, data science can massively improve marketing, create operational efficiencies, build new business models, disrupt the competitive status quo of industry and spark innovation.

Focusing in on the data analytics leaders need to understand, the program looks at: Big Data, Analytics and AI Concepts; Optimizing with Analytics and AI; How to Build Organizational Muscle in Analytics; and Applying Analytics and AI to Your Business

In this short video Florian Zettelmeyer explains why analytics is a leadership problem: