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| Photo: Charles Galunic |
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| Photo: iStock |
They also have incredible bandwidth for gathering reams of data. It’s not only “big” data, but “fast” data. In the 1990s, capturing data on consumer or employee behaviour meant conducting surveys, interviews, focus groups and data aggregation. Human beings plugged data into machines that spat out charts and tables for them to analyse.
Now that we have a wealth of real-time, and highly granular, information from the many digital products in our lives, the key is extracting meaning from all of these data. This means some new roles, and some added complications for old ones.
Executives and managers at the forefront
of digitisation who we recently interviewed stressed that the focus
today is less on “data” and “storage” than on “analysis” and “ideas”.
But as these managers explained, this has multiple implications for the
way data are mined, the skills and roles organisations need and who
takes the lead.
Quants, digital natives and suits
Our interviewees expressed demand for three different types of people: “quants”, “digital natives” and “suits”. The quants are those with math, deep programming and analytical skills. One advertising manager described this as a shift from “Mad Men” to “Math Men”. In many ways, this is the cornerstone of the digital skillsets that companies need. People with programming and deep analytical skills will be in high demand for the foreseeable future.
Digital natives are those well versed with our digital world and digital lifestyles. While digital natives are typically young, they can be found across age groups. They are people passionate to learn how things digital are increasingly becoming integrated with all facets of life. They are active users of many platforms from messaging to video streaming, and preferably know a thing or two about coding.
One respondent told us that “you need to have so-called digital natives who have grown up with this and who also constantly follow it and have the open mindset to hopefully anticipate and foresee changes in the future.”
Finally, organisations on the digital journey still need “the suits”, people who understand business plans, marketing, financial structures and operational processes. Suits can monetise opportunities by connecting technological value to customer needs.
But when quants, digital natives and suits work together, things can often get lost in translation.
Read more...
Related link
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| Photo: iStock |
A 10-Point Framework for the Digital Journey by Charles Galunic, Professor of Organisational Behaviour and the Aviva Chaired Professor of Leadership and Responsibility at INSEAD.
"Digitisation is here to stay so organisations should consider treating it as a long-term investment."
Source: INSEAD Knowledge
