Decisions from Data: Driving an Organisation with Analytics

Introduction

The course is intended for professionals who want to understand the potential and the requirements and process of data analysis, whether they currently work with data scientists, manage data science projects, invest in data science, or must act on data-driven knowledge already or have not yet done that. We particularly encourage employers that are expanding data-driven capabilities to use this course as a universally accessible introduction to data-driven strategy for existing employees. 

According to the 2012 World Economic Forum, “data is the new oil”. Analytics and data science, particularly of the “Big Data” available from sensors and web interactions, are increasingly critical for productivity gains and strategic competitive advantage. Practitioners in these fields typically come from computer science or statistics, and have years of technical training, but no systematic training or experience in business management problems. On the other hand, strategic management professionals have experience with management problems and could potentially benefit from a deeper understanding of data science potential.
Data science at work aims to help bridging this gap. With a three-day intensive overview on data science possibilities, visualized outcomes and scenarios, this course helps strategic management professionals understand data science possibilities with the goal of making them better data science consumers and better able to communicate with data scientists.
We will introduce students to successful big data and analytics projects, ask the students to imagine the data-driven questions they would want answered, and let them reflect on their own organizations’ data science opportunities. That way, they would go back aware of what can be done with data science.
Through lectures, real-world cases and a final workshop, the course introduces data science and analytics for public, private, and non-profit strategic management applications. 

Course content

This program covers two overarching themes,incorporating a workshop in which students can apply those themes to their own organizations. The first theme is Strategy in the Age of Digitalization. Organizations and

individuals are increasingly digital. What strategic opportunities and challenges does this create? The

second theme is Data Science as an Essential and Distinctive Capability. In an increasingly digital world,

organizations must master techniques to acquire, manage, and process vast amounts of data. Such data

science mastery is today’s competitive advantage, and tomorrow’s barrier to entry. After introducing these

themes, a workshop will allow students to brainstorm about their own organizations’ digital opportunities and

digital needs.