Commentaries

Competing on Analytics: A book review by Bob Morris

September 10, 2017

Competing on Analytics: Updated, with a New Introduction: The New Science of Winning Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris Harvard Business Review Press (September 2017) How to make “a strategic shift toward cognitive technologies in general, and machine learning in particular”…

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Julian H. Bigelow’s “Maxims for Ideal Prognosticators”

September 10, 2017

In George Dyson’s classic, Turing’s Cathedral, he examines “the origins of the digital universe.” Dozens of passages caught my eye, including one wherein he discusses a list of George H. Bigelow’s fourteen “Maxims for Ideal Prognosticators.” They are eminently sensible…

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Analytics as a Source of Competitive Advantage

September 7, 2017

In the updated and expanded edition of Competing on Analytics (first published in 2007), Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris focus on an important lesson: “Extracting value from information is not primarily a matter of how much data you have or…

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Using rapid process digitization to transform the customer experience

September 6, 2017

Transforming the customer experience requires a level of speed and precision that traditional approaches can’t meet. The best practitioners do it in real time. Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Line Hartvig Müller, Andrea Peyracchia, and…

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Matthew Prince (chief executive of Cloudflare) in “The Corner Office”

September 5, 2017

Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Matthew Prince, chief executive of…

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The First Labor Day

September 4, 2017

Before I began some research on the subject, I did not know that, until Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, laborers who chose to participate in parades to celebrate anything had to forfeit a day’s wages. I am…

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An invitation to “strap in for a whistle-stop tour into the inner cosmos”

September 3, 2017

In The Brain, David Eagleman explains that “the inner cosmos” is an infinitely dense tangle of billons of brain cells and their trillions of connections. “I hope you’ll be able “to squint and make out something that you might not have…

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Schedule Regular Check-ins with Your Direct Reports

September 3, 2017

Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here. * * * Even if you think annual performance reviews should be abolished,…

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Hidden sources of better supply chain performance

September 2, 2017

High-level benchmarks often obscure paths to operations improvements. New data and metrics that tap underlying performance dynamics offer better visibility. Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Per- Per-Magnus Karlsson, Shruti Lal, and Daniel Rexhausen for the…

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5 Surprising Facts About the Battle of Dunkirk

September 1, 2017

Here is an excerpt from an article by Erik Sass for the Mental Floss Studios website. To read the complete article and check out others, please click here. Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images * * * [amazon_link asins=’0062792148,B07444VZ63,0571336256′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’bobmorris1-20′ marketplace=’US’…

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