The National Academy of Engineering identified fourteen "Grand Challenges for Engineering" that must be addressed in order to achieve a sustainable, economically robust, and politically stable future. (see the full list here) The challenges are a call-to-action for solutions to some of the most pressing issues in the 21st century:
Once I was chairing a conference where the speaker was explaining the business model for the licensing of the Peanuts cartoon characters - Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang - and how all that works when it comes to the balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (in case you are wondering,
In Amsterdam, harnessing the power of the (data) tide With more than 100 km of canals and 1,500 bridges, dikes and dams, Amsterdam has long been in tune with the tides. Today, as an economic tide tugs at Europe and many regions, organizations are coping with a flood of data
A question was recently put to me by everyone’s favorite futurist – Thornton May: “Most people don't put innovation and infrastructure in the same sentence. They simply tend to view savings derived from optimized infrastructure as a funding source for “other” innovation investments. My thoughts?” My thoughts initially circled in
I have been privileged to have had the opportunity to contribute to the recently published, “Positioned – Strategic Workforce Planning that gets the Right Person in the Right Job”, co-edited by Rob Tripp, Workforce Planning Manager at Ford Motor Company. The list of contributors is a Who’s Who of strategic
Wouldn’t it be great if we could predict the future? As a kid, I liked to write sci-fi stories. I wrote stories about what the year 2000 would be like: flying cars, robots, and talking dogs. OK, I won’t admit what year I was actually writing these stories, but back
What were we blogging about last year at this time? Some of our bloggers were attending a leadership conference in Singapore and others were attending an analytics conference at Disney. It may surprise you to know we were already talking about high-performance analytics. In fact, we were talking about high-performance
Last year I was given an iPad. At the time I was rather ho-hum about my new toy, but my fourteen-year-old daughter was ecstatic about it. I now know why. Today, I am writing this blog post from my iPad and I am lost when I leave it at home.
Today, more companies are offering more products in more markets in more currencies to more customer segments than ever before. The result? An exponential explosion in data covering virtually every aspect of the organization: sales, marketing, finance, manufacturing, legal, HR, and more. Unquestionably, the era of “big data” has arrived.
In my role at SAS I have the great fortune to meet with business intelligence and analytic (BI&A) teams all across the United States to share and discuss best practices and pain points, particularly around the ability to execute and operationalize insight internally and externally throughout the organization. In these
It's true. "Big data" can be a problem and an opportunity. Many organizations have struggled to manage, much less profit from, the deluge. In 2012, look for big data to spur demand for big data analytics. New developments in high-performance computing as well as increased demand for visualization and text
I was privileged to attend the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Board of Directors meeting in Washington D.C. recently. Attended by some 300 senior executives of American Manufacturing companies, it was like a who’s-who in brand names anyone would recognize. NAM is a very big influencer of public policy on
The SAS Power Series Tour had its most recent stop in the heart of Silicon Valley, San Jose. This gave me another chance to test my hypothesis that firms in the Valley are not big users of analytics. My theory goes that high-tech firms are much more focused on creating
Summer has almost come to a close – and thank goodness! Up here in the Northeast, we’ve been subjected to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes. I’ve been waiting for the locusts to descend! And outside of dodging hail and charging my laptop with my car’s cigarette lighter when we lost
A lot of ink is being spilled over Steve Jobs leaving Apple. Okay here is a little more. Some of my younger friends and colleagues are surprised I have purchased an iPad. Apparently, to younger folk, most persons of my advanced years seem technologically challenged. But I learned a valuable
How do you know when you’ve given a great presentation? When someone remembers it a year later and writes a blog post about it. That great presentation in this case was given by Erik DaRosa, Director of Global FP&A for Avon, who spoke at the IE Group’s Financial Forecasting Conference this time last year
There is a lot of talk hither and yon about a “double-dip” recession. Not at all uncommon when you consider past recessions. Let’s take a look at some data from the June 2011 survey of senior financial executives from the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI to dig into the double dip theories. MAPI
At the first panel discussion of the Premier Business Leadership Series on Tuesday morning, host Mark Jeffries introduced attendees to a new feature - the Clikapad wireless voting keypad. During each panel presentation throughout the conference, audience participation will be facilitated with polls via the keypads. Jeffries started the first panel discussion with this
Thousands of people have participated in this year's Applying Business Analytics Webinar Series, and now is your chance to get in on it too! Whether you are able to join in live on July 20 or view later on demand, you'll want to catch the complimentary Webinar, “Text Analytics –
Shailendra Ghorpade of MetLife, Daniel Hamilton of Johns Hopkins University and Penelope Naas of Citi are all committed Atlanticists: but they all see some issues ahead, especially for Europe, and according to Daniel the window of opportunity for putting things right is a small one. In the AmCham EU panel
