by Angela Guess
John Weathington recently wrote in TechRepublic, “There’s no reason for a data scientist to don a white coat or play with beakers. In practice they should be an integral part of your corporate strategy, driving forward the development of your next innovation. The idea of stashing data scientists away in a data lab to focus purely on research and development is an interesting concept, but it’s not a great corporate move to spend all that money on a data think tank. As a rule of thumb that’s true; however, there is a very important exception. To implement a breakthrough strategy, consider building a data science research and development team.”
Weathington goes on, “Welcome to my first key strategy: never put all your data scientists in a research and development function. For your corporate strategy to support a data science research and development function, you must also have a complementary data science product development function. You will go broke fast if you can’t figure out how to turn all this uncultured genius into a product that works and the only people in your company who can do that are other data scientists. Some data science concepts, especially the ones required for a breakthrough strategy, are very difficult to understand if you’re not a data scientist. Make sure these data scientists are in place to bring your product or service into reality.”
Photo credit: Flickr/ Devika_smile