Creating a Data-Driven Organization: Practical Advice from the Trenches

This book approaches big data a little differently than most. It’s less about actually slicing and dicing statistics and is more about the organizational challenges to building an organization that runs on data above all else.

The author discusses the cultural challenges – how to avoid the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) problem, how to build a team, how to frame the data, etc. It’s less science, more organizational therapy and human social engineering, with a dash of human resources. For instance, there’s an entire chapter about the phenomenon of the CAO (Chief Analytics Officer) and CDO (Chief Data Officer).

It’s a nice angle that I haven’t seen presented elsewhere. Most books in this space are about (1) math, or (2) programming constructs around that math. This book takes a step back and makes it about people, which is a welcome change.