Links for March 24 2013
- “Steering your car via the gas tank”, when cost trumps strategy
Quote: …the budget is not a strategy, it is not a means of leadership, and it is simply an allocation of resources that should support rather than set the direction of where we need to go.
- Data science is not enough. We need data intelligence too — Tech News and Analysis
Quote: In his talk at Structure: Data, Quid’s Sean Gourley talked about the meaningful differences between “data science” and “data intelligence.” While one is concerned with correlations, the other is concerned about solving problems
- What Your Culture Really Says – Pretty Little State Machine
Quote: Culture is about power dynamics, unspoken priorities and beliefs, mythologies, conflicts, enforcement of social norms, creation of in/out groups and distribution of wealth and control inside companies. Culture is usually ugly. It is as much about the inevitable brokenness and dysfunction of teams as it is about their accomplishments. Culture is exceedingly difficult to talk about honestly. The critique of startup culture that came in large part from the agile movement has been replaced by sanitized, pompous, dishonest slogans.
- It’s not enough to just have information — intelligence requires context — Tech News and Analysis
Quote: Military intelligence has reams of information about the regions and individuals it needs to keep an eye on, but a senior U.S. analyst says we still lack an understanding of the real context for much of that information.
- Human Intervention as a Competitive Advantage | Derek Sivers
Quote: When everyone else is trying to automate everything, using a little human intervention can be a competitive advantage.
- Leadership in the Age of Agility & Experimentation –
Quote: They have been able to overcome some of the cultural barriers by making sure leaders and teams are super clear on what the team’s goals are and they all understand the problems everyone is trying to solve. They have also shifted the internal language of the organization to begin asking leaders questions such as “what were the experiments you can point to that prove your thinking?” or “what are the leap of faith assumptions and when can you start running experiments to prove or disprove them?” By shifting the focus and having the courage and commitment to say no they are seeing some great success and avoiding major failures. As he summed up Intuit’s results in their Indian Fasal business where they have tried 14 experiments. 10 were failures, 2 were successes, 1 was in a pivot and the last one was too early to tell.
- assertTrue( ): The “Good Data” Problem in Science
Quote: In the long run, I think Open Access online journals will completely redefine academic publishing, and somewhere along the way, such journals will evolve a system of transparency that will be the death of dishonest or half-honest research. The old-fashioned Elsevier model will simply fade away, and with it, most of its problems.
- Big data needs people, leaders and real-time analytics: A Structure:Data 2013 recap — Tech News and Analysis
Quote: A few trends emerged in more than 30 talks at this year’s GigaOM Structure:Data conference in New York on March 20-21. The big one: people play a crucial part in the big data equation.
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