The Challenging Role of Data Scientists in Business from Sand Hill
In “Dresner’s Point: Data Scientists Have Keys to the Kingdom,” Howard Dresner discusses the role of the data scientist and brings together comments from a recent Twitter conversation on the topic. The author argues that we clearly do not have enough data scientists given current technology challenges and that it may be easier to train a business person and transform that individual into a data scientist rather than training a technologist with the necessary business skills. Communication skills seem to be at the heart of this perspective:
A data scientist needs more than business analysis, data analysis and communications skills. Such an individual also will need a really deep understanding of the company’s business because consequences definitely will arise from the scientist’s queries and insights. It could even lead to completely transforming a company.
The article concludes that anyone considering a career in data science should be “lionhearted” because they need to be aware of the business and career outcomes of any data insights they present.
Data scientists strive to produce relevant insight that makes data actionable. To do so, the right tools are needed. The Semaphore Content Intelligence Platform from Smartlogic can turn unstructured data into actionable information for executives to use for solving business challenges. The platform includes capabilities like taxonomies, ontologies, dynamic navigation and content surfacing, and automated classification to extract facts and insights for smart content development.