In 2012, Harvard Business Review labeled Data Science as “the sexiest job of the 21st century”. In that article, the authors explained that there will be a shortage of data scientists in the upcoming years. Due to this there will be a high demand for data scientists, who are professionals that can deal with big data. Furthermore, it is only until recent years did most companies start realizing the benefits of dealing with big data and thus there was a sudden appearance and demand for data scientists in the business field. It is true those data scientists always existed and were mostly employed by start-ups. However, today with the mainstreaming of Big Data, we have seen a significant decline in the proportion of data scientists employed by startups. The figure declined from 29% in 2014 to 14% in 2015 as data science became adopted by all organizations in all industries.
A better question to ask is what does it mean for managers who can’t deal with Big Data? Well this means that managers need to start focusing on attracting the best talents around the world. This would be especially challenging as the talent pool is fairly fresh and small. Furthermore, managers could also use formal or on-the-job training to develop their own employees and give them the analytical skills required. However there will still be another challenge to overcome. That is the challenge of turning analytical insights into business actions. This is due to the fact that managers are not necessarily analytical and cannot translate business needs and goals to technical terms. On the other hand, data scientists are too technical and do not have the business background to communicate and translate information into business actions.
As a result of this gap between business and data science, many companies today have started creating new roles and changing their organizational structure. New roles such as chief data officers, chief analytics officer, or chief information officers have emerged to ensure big data can be properly translated into effective business actions. This is why studying Business Information Management will be rewarded later on in your careers as yoy
embark to close the gap between big data and business actions.
Hi Mounim! Thank you for your blog! I like how you ended it, and I indeed believe that studying Business Information Management will be very rewarding in the future, as there are not many studies like this out there yet. From my own work experience, I believe data can give any company a tremendous advantage is analysing customer preferences, and in making the business go in the right direction. However, you indeed do need people who go about data, and I believe that to be our generation. I look forward to seeing what kind of jobs we as BIM students will end up having 🙂
Hi Mounim! Thanks for your post. I think the upcoming hype of ‘big data scientists’ can even be seen in the popularity increase of our business information management masters program. From one year to the next, the course gained significantly more attention by firms, who became very interested in the recruitment of the program’s graduates. Having this degree will definitely be useful in the future, especially for managerial positions, since individuals will be able to understand both business and technical parties. In the future, the competition will be more tough for these technological-related positions, especially since elementary schools have recently started integrating “programming packets” into their curriculum. This latest addition will also help develop a child’s creativity and logical thinking skills. Quite impressive to see how early children will be learning this knowledge!
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