Strategic Management Practices Issues Group: Competing on Analytics

Chicago Booth Alumni Club of Chicago

April 16, 2010: 7:30 AM - 8:45 AM

Join us for a thought-provoking discussion about the impact of current business trends on management and strategy, sponsored by the Chicago Booth Alumni Club. These breakfast discussion sessions are held in the loop and are designed to be highly interactive, providing a forum of particular value to alumni responsible for developing, influencing or executing enterprise strategies and policies. The conversations are structured around one or more recommended readings, which will be posted on the registration page prior to the session. Attendance is limited to 20 people so that everyone who attends will have ample opportunity to join the discussion. There is no speaker at this event. The participants constitute the "panel," and a facilitator will make certain that everyone has a chance to share their ideas. This is a BYOB (Bring Your Own Breakfast) event, so feel free to bring a cup of coffee and something to enjoy during the conversation.

Where

Chicago Loop
venue information will be e-mailed to registered attendees.
Chicago, Illinois

Event Details

Competing on Analytics: A look at who's using them and how the application of analytics is transforming business. April Strategic Management Practices Issues Group. Technical analysis, the long the domain of operations research, has now been applied to a variety of business challenges. Perhaps most famously in MoneyBall, Michael Lewis shared how statistics were deployed by Billy Bean to buy players scouts had overlooked, but whose statistics suggested would lead the team to victory. Peter Drucker in a letter to Russell Ackoff described how his early applications of quantitative methods convinced GE and AT&T management teams that it was a substitute for thinking. He acknowledged that Ackoff's work showed him that "QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS comes AFTER the THINKING -- it validates the thinking; it shows up intellectual sloppiness and uncritical reliance on precedent, on untested assumptions and on the seemingly "obvious." But it does not substitute for hard, rigorous, intellectually challenging THINKING. It demands it, though -- but does not replace it. This is, of course, what YOU mean BY system. And your work in those far-away days thus saved me -- as it saved countless others -- from either descending into mindless "model building" -- the disease that all but destroyed so many of the Business Schools in the last decades -- or from sloppiness parading as 'insight.'" This month, in an extension of last month's look at the Search engine domain, we will focus on who else is using analytics to create their competitive advantage. We have a series of short articles and a more elaborate description in HBR by Thomas Davenport prior to publication of his book Competing on Analytics a. The Chemistry of a 90+ year wine http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/magazine/07ENOLOGI.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=David+Darlington+Chemistry+of+wine&st=nyt b. AT&T Looks beyond 'Number, Please' http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/business/22phone.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1 c. Bain 2002 Study on how Companies are using Analytics: http://www.bain.com/management_tools/mt_detail.asp?id=13279&menu_url=articles_overview.asp d. Predictive Analytics with Data Mining: http://www.information-management.com/specialreports/20050215/1019956-1.html e. Competing on Analytics-Thomas Davenport, HBR Jan. 2006: http://hbr.org/2006/01/competing-on-analytics/ar/1

Cost

No Charge

Registration

Register Online
Registration requires a valid e-mail address. No registrations can be accepted after April 14.

Deadline: 4/14/2010

Questions

Bob Rieder 

(847) 826-0208

Other Information

Meetings start at 7:30AM and end promptly at 8:45AM. Start your Friday morning by updating your MBA, discussing the latest management concepts with fellow Booth alums, and expanding your professional network - and still make it to the office by 9AM.