Insights

Increasingly, CIOs say to me that the value of what they are doing is instantiated through data and analytics. But how do you build an analytics capability that works for the business as a whole? This is the question that I asked recently of the #CIOChat. Their answers should have value to everyone involved in the data or analytics. Should analytics be managed for the business or for operating groups? CIOs had a variety of opinions...

The inventor of the first neurocomputer, Dr. Robert Hecht-Nielsen, defines a neural network as – "...a computing system made up of a number of simple, highly interconnected processing elements, which process information by their dynamic state response to external inputs.” Artificial neural networks are one of the most important tools used in machine learning. They are brain-inspired systems which are designed for...

"The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn't detect." — Mark Twain (Read Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , and Part 5 of this Death of Advertising series.) On an auspicious Friday night in Asheville, North Carolina on June...

A conversation with Stephen M. Schneider, PhD, PMP, core doctoral faculty at Capella University (Content sponsored by Capella University) We recently sat down with Dr. Schneider , coauthor of "The Laminated Glass Ceiling", to understand what he thinks is holding women back as leaders in information technology. Below are excerpts from that conversation. Q: What was the motivation behind the paper, "The Laminated Glass Ceiling"?...

(Content sponsored by CVS Health) Every day at CVS Health, five million customers visit their retail pharmacies. And from each of these interactions, they gather just some of the data that they use every day to drive decisions. Team members use data, for example, to optimize ExtraCare, one of the industry’s largest and most advanced retail rewards program. They use it to build bridges across data sets to help with medication...

"If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation." — Don Draper, "Mad Men" (Read Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , and Part 5 of this Death of Advertising series.) The advertising winds are changing. Prior to reading this article, how many of you clicked on a banner ad in Facebook? How many clicked on the thirty second spot prior to watching a YouTube video? How many of you clicked on the...

American writer, futurist, and businessman Alvin Toffler observed major technological innovations – including television, the birth control pill, and travel by jet aircraft – and the cresting of the transformative wave from an industrial to a post-industrial society in which brain work was dominant over physical labor. Looking forward, Toffler saw more and more rapid innovation and greater social dislocation. In response, Toffler...

"I want God, I want poetry, I want danger, I want freedom, I want sin." — Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World" This week it was announced Sears will be closing all its mall locations in Asheville, North Carolina. Sears has been the cornerstone of the American mall experience since the 1960s and 1970s. But if you have been to a mall lately, you will notice shopping malls have become a barren wasteland of mobile phone repair...

We live in a world where we are inundated with more information on a daily basis than we can possibly process. It is an over-communicated environment. There are so many unwanted messages bombarding us that often the ones we want get lost in the noise. It doesn't matter whether you are connected to the Internet or not. We get hit by information at every turn – at work, at home and even as we try to relax. Have you ever wondered that...

(Content sponsored by Capella University) Not long ago, technical skills were all that IT and analytics professionals needed to grow their careers. Not anymore. Over the past few decades, technology has become key to executing business strategy. The challenge, however, was that some IT professionals didn’t understand the business—they understood IT. Mad technical skills alone no longer cut it for IT experts. Merging IT...

Already, computing systems are outperforming humans in many tasks that profoundly shape our everyday lives in the fields of transportation, communication, energy, finance, healthcare, retail, education, public services and utilities, law as well as defense and security. There are also clear upsides and opportunities, disrupting the fabric of our social contracts, our sense of human identity and dignity, and our considerations of agency and...

There are many aspects of the healthcare industry that are ripe for streamlining with blockchain. For instance, my last Blockchain Spotlight article focused on a new telehealth company called WELL. This time around I’m talking to Synthium to find out more about their platform to address the costs and inefficiencies in the medical device market, of which there are many. Small- to medium-sized manufacturers of medical devices cannot...