Past Book Review (May 13, 2007): "Competing on Analytics"

Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, by Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris, Harvard Business School Press, 2007, reposted here:

The recent Wall Street Journal review of this work captivated me enough for a follow-up read. Competing on Analytics is presented in two parts. The first presents analytics and how it might be adopted by businesses, and the second is a more practical discourse on how readers might use the information from the first part. Much of the material in this book can undoubtedly be found elsewhere, but what sets this book apart from industry periodicals and online resources is that it is very well written for an apparent target audience consisting of business professionals not familiar with business intelligence and how it might be used to compete in the marketplace. And this book can be easily read in an afternoon. The authors are correct that Competing on Analytics is the first text to specifically address analytical competition, and the well-written introduction to this subject is enhanced by numerous industry examples. For example, heavily sports-minded American business professionals might find it interesting that Davenport and Harris explain how analytics are currently being used to successfully recruit athletes.

What is a bit perplexing with this book, as well as it is written, is that there are very few diagrams presented for such a topic. Most business professionals, for example, probably agree that what makes dashboards so popular with management is that they are very visual. One would think that more diagrams would be included for such a readership. The best diagram in the book, Figure 1-2, which graphs Degree of Intelligence versus Competitive Advantage, is not even new to the book (it was adapted from a diagram by SAS). However, the authors do a great job at presenting analytical competition topics that include what they deem the "four pillars of analytical competition", and the "five stages of analytical competition", although this latter offering is a bit much like the Capability Maturity Model, a model created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University that has been imitated ever since it was first developed in the mid-1980s. In summary, Competing on Analytics provides a great introduction to an important business/economics concept that was previously unavailable in textbook form, but those interested in practical implementations of business intelligence, such as data warehousing, will need to look elsewhere.