Books that Influenced my Thinking: Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Oct 10, 2012 by Thomas Redman

I suppose all of us pride ourselves on having an open mind, examining the facts and doing what’s best. Why, then, is change so hard?

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about this subject, both with my clients and in a larger sense. I wish I had a better answer. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions provided some insights.

Books that Influenced my Thinking: Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Oct 03, 2012 by Thomas Redman

Edward Tufte’s books on presenting complex data are among the most beautiful ever written. One can’t help but feel inspired as one pages through the simple representations that bring relationships among variables to life. Nor can one help but feel saddened by graphs that simply don’t tell the truth. See the first 50 pages of The Visual Display of…

Books that Influenced my Thinking: Ries and Trout’s Marketing Warfare

Sep 26, 2012 by Thomas Redman

Last week I noted that Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote two great books that influenced my thinking and I summarized Positioning. This week, I discuss Marketing Warfare, which builds on Positioning. It advises that “marketing is war,” even citing Karl von Clausewitz (the Prussian General who wrote On War in the mid 1800s) as one of the greatest marketing strategists of all time.

Books that Influenced my Thinking: Ries and Trout’s Positioning

Sep 19, 2012 by Thomas Redman

Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote two books that impacted my thinking about data quality. Positioning is essentially about establishing a place in the customer or prospect’s mind. Open the front cover and the right-hand page reads: “To the world’s second best marketing firm.”

Flip the page to read: “Whoever they are.”

Now that’s positioning!

Books that Influenced my Thinking: Kent’s Data and Reality

Sep 05, 2012 by Thomas Redman

It was the rumor that Steve Hoberman (Technics Publications) planned to reissue Data and Reality by William Kent that led me to use this space to review books that had influenced my thinking about data and data quality. My plan had been to do the review of Data and Reality as soon as it came out. I completely missed the boat – it has been out for some six months.

Books that Influenced my Thinking: Zuckerman and Hatala’s Incredibly American

Aug 29, 2012 by Thomas Redman

(Almost) everyone knows that it is not the deep technical problems that slow data quality programs. It is the organizational, political and social issues that really get in the way. Solving these problems is the most important management challenge of our time. With this background, I introduce Incredibly American, by Marilyn Zuckerman and Lew Hatala. It is a real point of light in this difficult area.

The War for Data Talent, Part II

Aug 23, 2012 by Thomas Redman

In my last post I gave a brief overview of a Heidrick & Struggles report “The War for Data Talent.” Today I want to follow up on one more thread in the H & S report. One of their results is as follows:  Of the 900 responders, 52 percent cite financial services as having the best professional talent, 30 percent the technology sector, 10 percent consumer and 8 percent other. The report states, “This comes as no surprise given the talent that crossed over from Bell Labs and other quantitative environments in the late 1980s and early 1990s” as the reason.

The War for Data Talent, Part 1

Aug 08, 2012 by Thomas Redman

There have been plenty of other signs that demands for people with data skills are growing rapidly, even in a soft economy.  The McKinsey report on Big Data cited even greater shortages of managerial talent than technical talent.  The IAIDQ job site on LinkedIn seems to have a couple of dozen posts every week.   Similarly, I get more calls from recruiters and executives who are looking for good people than ever before.

Books that Influenced my Thinking: The Social Life of Information

Aug 01, 2012 by Thomas Redman

Readers may know that I started my work in data quality while at Bell Labs.  After we had a couple of practical successes with AT&T units, we decided it was time to do some fundamental thinking about data (Anany Levitin and Chris Fox, now at Villanova and James Madison, respectively led most of the work described here).  The first thing we needed to do was get a good definition of “data.”