Data-Driven Leaders Always Win: An Essential Guide For Leaders In the Age of Data

Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum states that we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. Klaus is describing the Fourth Industrial Revolution or the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. In order to make this point, the author Jay Zaidi has labeled the Fourth Industrial Revolution the "Age of Data."

Organizations are being forced to undergo a digital transformation and this is creating a tumultuous period of change for them. Those that wish to win with data must implement a data culture - a complex undertaking. It requires an in-depth understanding of the data ecosystem, its components, and the interaction between people, process, technology, and data, to deliver business value.

Data-Driven Leaders Always Win connects the dots across various data management fields, and their practical application, using real life experience that the author gained while leading enterprise-wide data management programs at the world's largest financial services company. Being data-savvy and data-driven are core skills for leaders and their organizations to win in the "Age of Data".

Regardless of the industry vertical you are in - if you are a leader, aspire to be one, or wish to influence your leadership team, and move up the corporate ladder in the "Age of Data", then this book is for you.

Jay Zaidi is the founder and managing partner of AlyData. As an entrepreneur, strategic advisor, and thought leader, he specialises in strategic data management, analytics, and change management. His firm provides services and solutions to help companies improve decision-making and performance, using data as a weapon of choice. Jay founded AlyData in 2014. For the thirteen previous years, he led enterprise data management programs at Fannie Mae, and he spent seven years in management consulting at PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLC and other firms prior to that. At Fannie Mae, he directly reported to the chief data officer and led data quality, metadata, master data management, analytics, and business intelligence organizations. During his tenure there, he was instrumental in delivering ten major data initiatives across eight company divisions. In 2012, Jay's team was awarded the Global Innovation Award for Fortifying Overall Operations with Global Data Quality by Informatica. He blogs on LinkedIn, is currently the most viewed author in the categories of data management and master data management on Quora, and is a regular speaker at industry conferences. In addition to his practical experience in strategic data management and cybersecurity, Jay has an M.S. in computer science from Texas A&M University and a bachelor's degree in electronics and communications engineering from Osmania University, India. He lives with his family outside Washington, DC, and is an avid photographer, an automobile enthusiast, loves to travel, and closely follows current events. Learn more about Jay via his LinkedIn profile(https: //www.linkedin.com/in/javedzaidi). Follow him on twitter @jayzaidi.

DR. KIRK BORNE is the principal data scientist for Booz Allen Hamilton (since 2015) within the NextGen Analytics and Data Science account of the Strategic Innovation Group. He is an internationally recognized speaker, author, researcher, teacher, adviser, and thought leader in data science disciplines (databases, data mining, machine learning, modeling, statistics, data ethics, and data-driven applications). He has over thirty years of professional experience in roles associated with management, research, and discovery within large data systems. He earned a PhD in Astronomy at Caltech, and received a BS in Physics summa cum laude at Louisiana State University. He spent twelve years as professor of astrophysics and computational science at George Mason University (GMU) in the graduate and undergraduate data science programs. He was co-creator of the world's first data science BS degree program (at GMU). He advised seven completed PhD dissertations in data science, computational informatics, and astronomy. Before that, he worked eighteen years on various NASA contracts - as research scientist, as a manager on a large science data system contract, and as the Hubble Telescope Data Archive project scientist. Kirk is a member of advisory boards for several firms in areas related to data science, analytics, and big data applications and services, and is on the editorial board of several journals related to informatics, data science, and computing. He has worked with numerous businesses (large and small) and federal agencies, where he has applied his expertise in science and large data systems as a consultant and adviser, focusing on the use of data for discovery, decision support, and innovation across many different domains and industries. He has contributed over two hundred conference talks worldwide, and has been an invited (and/or keynote) speaker for over two hundred additional events (conferences, meetups, universities, and organizations). He has published over two hundred papers (including more than sixty peer-reviewed publications). He is the originator of the field of Astroinformatics (data science for astronomy) and contributes to data science development within numerous organizations (public, private, federal, and nonprofit) to enhance data literacy and data science skills in the next-generation workforce. Dr. Borne is also a blogger (rocketdatascience.org) and actively promotes data literacy for everyone by disseminating information related to data science and analytics on social media, where he has been named consistently since 2013 among the top worldwide influencers in big data and data science. In 2016, he was identified as the number-one worldwide influencer in big data, the number-two influencer in data science and machine learning, and a top-twenty influencer in the Internet of Things. You can follow him on Twitter at @KirkDBorne.