Data-driven Decision Making

Congress wants answers. It’s caveat emptor if someone boosts (pays to advertise) a Facebook post about a new fruit smoothie that prevents cancer, heart disease, and warts. But suggest to a professional politician that the same exact Facebook advertising might adversely affect that politician’s ability to get reelected, and it’s time for a congressional hearing. Continue Reading →

Professional negotiators often wax poetic about win-win outcomes: where both sides cooperate and compromise. In practice, win-win is never a dominant strategy. Lose-lose almost always beats it. Here’s why. Continue Reading →

What, exactly, did Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other tech giants do to empower or enable bad actors (foreign governments, radical organizations, Russians) to influence the outcome of the 2016 elections? How did it happen? Who is to blame? How can we prevent it from happening again? Continue Reading →

Facebook is under scrutiny for (among other things) allegedly selling political ads to the Russians, allowing people to set up fake accounts, and not properly monitoring the content posted by “fake” profiles. Wait. What? Continue Reading →

Shelly Palmer talks about the end of fitness trackers and Verizon's Wear24 Smart Watch on Fox 5 with Teresa Priolo and Antwan Lewis. Original Airdate: July 25, 2017 Continue Reading →

According to Gartner, 2017 is the year CMOs (chief marketing officers) will buy more tech than CIOs (chief information officers). This is truly unfortunate. CMOs should never buy tech, ever! Continue Reading →

Because the velocity of data is increasing and will always increase, the need for data literacy is increasing and will always increase. This does not mean that to be a successful executive you have to become a data scientist – quite the contrary. It means that in order to be a successful executive, you need to understand how data is turned into action, be familiar with the methods of data science and data-scientific research, and be able to think strategically about how to use data to create value for your business. Here's an article I wrote a while back that explains how data literacy will make you "almost" invincible. Continue Reading →

We deal with procurement departments everyday. It's a fact of modern day corporate life. But this week, I've had to respond to so many RFPs asking for "blue disco balls," (my metaphoric name for a specific kind of middle management error that most vendors, suppliers and even solutions providers love most), I'm thinking about hanging one over my desk. What is a “blue disco ball?” Here's a story I wrote last year about every senior executive’s worst nightmare and every vendor’s holiday bonus all rolled into a budget-busting good time. Continue Reading →

When to start using machine learning in your business is not a hypothetical question; it’s a question you must answer today. Not because I say so, but because your competitors are working on their answers as you are reading this. So here are a few thought starters to help you explore your machine learning investment strategy. Continue Reading →

Machine learning, AI, cognitive computing, natural language understanding, image recognition, pattern matching, autonomous devices – these are just a few of 2017’s loosely defined catchall phrases. But in practice, they each refer to a significant field of study that is guaranteed to have an impact on the way people live and how business is done. So here are five things that you, as the leader of an organization that is singularly focused on creating shareholder value (however you define it), need to know ... Continue Reading →