Shifting the Balance
How Top Organizations Beat the Competition by Combining Intuition with Data
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
Digital transformation expert Mark Schrutt reveals how the world’s top companies are using vast amounts of data to inform their decisions, disrupt industries, and get closer to their customers. Businesses that continue to rely only on intuition do so at their peril.
What if you had the data you always wanted and could tell what was truly an emerging trend that would forever change your industry? Shifting the Balance analyzes the turn towards data-driven decision-making and describes how best-in-class organizations use data to shift their field of vision so it is forward-looking instead of reactive. Case studies with practical examples of how leading businesses address key challenges on the path to becoming data-driven include:
• How companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Land O’Lakes, whose industries are defined by resellers, are connecting directly with their customers to improve satisfaction and relevancy
• How data-driven decision-making shaped the largest one-sided deal in sports, paying the owners of a team that did not play a game for 40 years over $800 million
• How companies such as Peloton and UberEats are using data-driven decision-making to disrupt and reimagine the fitness and restaurant industries
• What professional sports franchises such as the Oakland A’s, Philadelphia Eagles, and Toronto Maple Leafs can teach us about using data in game-changing business decisions
Shifting the Balance offers a roadmap that will enable organizations to make better business decisions that drive even better results, and provides a fascinating read along the way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Schrutt, strategic adviser at the market intelligence firm International Data Corporation, suggests in his rigorous debut that relying on gut instincts is not the wisest business strategy. Though data is increasingly available, he notes, just 30% of business decisions rely on it, leaving the remainder up to intuition. To prove that numbers deserve their fair play, Schrutt chronicles advances in data use, including by credit agencies, airlines, and hotel chains, and cites such businesses as Proctor and Gamble, which uses weather data to determine the best areas for anti-frizz hair products, and the Boston Red Sox, who "have shown that combining analytics with the human factor increases the success on the field by 10 percent to 15 percent." On the advice front, he urges business leaders to evolve their decision-making culture slowly and recruit management from such data-heavy sectors as government and finance. Schrutt tends to conflate a disinclination to rely on data with poor decisions, and readers will likely wonder if a careful analysis of data, for instance, would have rescued Blockbuster, Kodak, or Sears. Still, he proves the merits of combining analytics with human intelligence. This lands as an illuminating dive into the global datasphere.
