哈佛商業評論三篇大資料 (Big Data) 的文章

因為出現了大量的、及時的、和多樣的資料，企業可以更精準地瞭解其顧客行為或改進內部的營運。根據作者的研究 (1)，正確使用此資料的優點為

In particular, companies in the top third of their industry in the use of data-driven decision making were, on average, 5% more productive and 6% more profitable than their competitors.

文中舉航空業 (PASSUR) 和零售業 (Sears) 為例說明之，也陳述了管理的挑戰 (leadership, talent management, technology, decision making, company culture) 和開始的方法

1. Pick a business unit to be the testing ground. It should have a quantfriendly leader backed up by a team of data scientists. 
2. Challenge each key function to identify five business opportunities based on big data, each of which could be prototyped within five weeks by a team of no more than five people.
3. Implement a process for innovation that includes four steps: experimentation, measurement, sharing, and replication. 
4. Keep in mind Joy’s Law: “Most of the smartest people work for someone else.” Open up some of your data sets and analytic challenges to interested parties across the internet and around the world.

McKinsey 的兩位顧問也提供了實施的步驟 (2) 

1. Multiple Data Sources   Creatively source internal and external data.   Upgrade IT architecture and infrastructure for easy merging of data.
2. Prediction and Optimization Models   Focus on the biggest drivers of performance.   Build models that balance complexity with ease of use.
3. Organizational Transformation   Create simple, understandable tools for people on the front lines.                      Update processes and develop capabilities to enable tool use. 

對個人而言，如何擁有此重要的技能？作者說 (3)

Think of him or her as a hybrid of data hacker, analyst, communicator, and trusted adviser.
Data scientists’ most basic, universal skill is the ability to write code.
But we would say the dominant trait among data scientists is an intense curiosity — a desire to go beneath the surface of a problem, find the questions at its heart, and distill them into a very clear set of hypotheses that can be tested.

因此目前從業人員的主修有物理 (天體物理學)、資工、生物、數學、經濟學、統計等等。作者 (3) 也提供公司找尋人才的十種方法。

文中介紹的 Insight Data Science Fellows Program 相當有趣 (pdf 說明檔)，這是由創投和企業所贊助成立的公司，經由六週的訓練，使頂尖的博士可以投入此行業。念理工科的比例上，台灣比美國多，所以台灣非常適合培養這方面的人才。學校教育本來就是強調基礎知識的傳遞和思維的訓練，以因應未來未知的職務和產業的變化；台灣的企業與其抱怨，還不如學學美國企業，投入資源以培養人才。

(1) Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, Big Data: The Management Revolution, October 2012, Harvad Business Review 

(2) Dominic Barton and David Court, Making Advanced Analytics Work for You, October 2012, Harvad Business Review

(3) Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil, Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century, October 2012, Harvad Business Review 

(4) 中文的翻譯，標題的翻譯和分類都有問題。