Getting Value From Your Data Scientists

Simply hiring expensive data scientists isn’t enough. To create real business value with data scientists, top management must learn how to manage them effectively.

Jeanne G. Harris and Vijay Mehrotra

Fall 2014

Data scientists are enjoying a heyday. No longer languishing at the periphery of organizations, these quantitative analysts today are recognized as highly skilled specialists trained to take on the most significant (and often the most complex) business challenges. They are the latest examples of “numbers people,” whose direct lineage goes back to the 1940s, when Ford Motor Co. recruited a team of statistical “whiz kids” (including Robert S. McNamara) from the U.S. military. The recent emergence of ...