As reliance on data and analytics continues to expand across industries from agriculture to manufacturing, health care to financial services, it stands to reason that the next generation of data leaders will have far-reaching roles that impact strategy, decision-making, operations, and countless other functions.
Once a year, I teach a course to aspiring data scientists. At the beginning of the first class, I ask my students what they hope to learn. Often, their answers are “analyze data” or “build good models.” Compare those responses to the workshops I run with practicing data scientists who speak in different terms when discussing what they do. They call it “solving problems” — a step in the right direction — but even that is too narrow.