Hotdesk scientists

We don’t know if you have spotted it yet but analytics, long the preserve of the fraud department and the PhD’s, has gone mainstream. Your boss has seen Moneyball, The Big Short and Bladerunner and we have all read Steven Levitt and Malcolm Gladwell and subscribed to their whimsical TED podcasts on how teachers massage test results or ice hockey players progress the junior ranks. In Chasm theory terms we are well and truly into the bell curve managing wind turbines, catching taxis and eating take away food like never before. But more telling is that we are all talking about data. Hacks are international news, ask British Airways, and a whole world of consumer security has been brought uncomfortably to our attention. Data science guys hotdesk everywhere previously untouched by tech, generally getting in the way and annoyingly trying to advise you on your plans for marketing, customer or asset management. How very rude. Rest easy, such is the demand for the exponential growth in the various flavours of data science (see Gartner here for even more) that actually the war for talent should save us all. Back to the old days of contrained resources and internal markets for labour. What a wonderful but utterly predictable irony. So you are safe for now but watch out the data science guys are everywhere coming to your function very soon adding value in that really annoying way they do. Oh… and in real time of course…