The answer to the talent challenge, in our experience, is creating an in-house analytics academy. These bespoke analytics-training centers are a relatively new development, and our experience to date suggests that they are poised to move from early adoption by select organizations to core elements of the AI transformations that lie ahead for most companies.

In this article, we explore what an analytics academy can do that other approaches largely can’t, as well as share best practices culled from companies that have launched academies.

It’s important to note that the current focus for analytics academies is to help their organizations successfully bring AI to scale. As a result, their first order of business is to reskill those who play an active role in this work—for example, helping business staff to acquire crucial analytics-translator skills. As more AI systems are deployed, a subsequent and equally important issue that all companies and society in general will need to answer is how to retrain workers when machines take on tasks humans once did. We believe academies hold the promise of playing a role in this retraining effort. But that is part of a larger conversation that is not the focus of our discussion here.