Data scientists may need help understanding the culture of business

Academic life is very different from the business world. Help your data scientists understand what’s expected of them.

I once watched an interview of a university data scientist who had been working on a project team that for seven years had been trying to solve a complex problem in genetics. The team concluded that it couldn’t arrive at an answer with its research, so it decided to disband.

In a university setting, it’s acceptable to pursue theoretical research and analytics without necessarily arriving at an impactful outcome. It is also why it may be important to acculturate data scientists so they can adjust to the more stringent results orientations and real-world applications of businesses.

Harvard Business Review apparently thinks so, too. Thomas C. Redman, president of Data Quality Solutions, questioned whether data scientists understood the “why” behind their work in business.

“Data science, broadly defined, has been around for a long time,” Redman said. “But the failure rates of big data projects in general and (artificial intelligence) projects in particular remain disturbingly high. And despite the hype (e.g., “data is the new oil”), companies have yet to cite the contributions of data science to their bottom lines.

Businesses themselves don’t understand what the data science discipline is, the work backgrounds from where data scientists are coming, and what it’s going to take to acculturate these highly trained data engineers to how a business operates and what it needs.

Many data scientists have lived their lives in environments funded by university grants that enabled them to pursue highly theoretical projects that are all about the quest for answers but not necessarily about finding definitive solutions for why customers seem to be suddenly favoring another brand, or why your manufactured products are suddenly experiencing more failures.

Companies also struggle with integrating data scientists with their existing business and IT workforces.