Is Analytics-driven Innovation the Ultimate Oxymoron?

Sometimes it just takes a simple, provocative statement to kick-off the innovation process – to remove an everyday given like driving a car or possessing a landline phone or centralizing all of your data in the cloud – to fuel the innovation process. Henrik Christensen, director of University San Diego's Contractual Robotics Institute, issued such a provocative statement: "My own prediction is that kids born today will never get to drive a car." I have recently been promoted to Chief Innovation Officer at Hitachi Vantara. I am very excited about the opportunity to build upon my work to interweave data science, design thinking, value engineering and economics to create a "Pathway to Analytics-driven Innovation" map that helps organizations derive and drive new sources of customer, product and operational value. Think of the "Pathway to Analytics-driven Innovation" as a maturity model that measures how effective organizations are at leveraging analytics to deliver innovative products and services to the market.