Chapter1IntroductionData-AnalyticThinking.ppt

Data and Data Science Capability as a Strategic Asset The idea of data as a strategic asset is certainly not limited to Capital One, nor even to the banking industry. Amazon was able to gather data early on online customers, which has created significant switching costs: consumers find value in the rankings and recommendations that Amazon provides. Amazon therefore can retain customers more easily, and can even charge a premium (Brynjolfsson Smith, 2000). Harrah’s casinos famously invested in gathering and mining data on gamblers, and moved itself from a small player in the casino business in the mid-1990s to the acquisition of Caesar’s Entertainment in 2005 to become the world’s largest gambling company. * Data and Data Science Capability as a Strategic Asset The huge valuation of Facebook has been credited to its vast and unique data assets (Sengupta, 2012), including both information about individuals and their likes, as well as information about the structure of the social network. Information about network structure has been shown to be important to predicting and has been shown to be remarkably helpful in building models of who will buy certain products (Hill, Provost, Volinsky, 2006). It is clear that Facebook has a remarkable data asset; whether they have the right data science strategies to take full advantage of it is an open question. In the book we will discuss in more detail many of the fundamental concepts behind these success stories, in exploring the principles of data mining and data-analytic thinking. * □ Data-Analytic Thinking Analyzing case studies such as the churn problem improves our ability to approach problems “data-analytically.” When faced with a business problem, you should be able to assess whether and how data can improve performance. We will discuss a set of fundamental concepts and principles that facilitate careful thinking. We will develop frameworks to structure the analysis so that it can be done systematically. Understandin