Tableau 9 has been hitting strides with some very nice new featuresets: Query Performance Improvements, Smart Maps Preview, Auto Data Prep and New Server Admin Views build upon a great v.8 release.
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Tag: change
Just started reading Need, Speed, and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness, and Tame the World’s Most Wicked Problems.
Must say its another refreshing look at how we must innovate in today’s global world. Written by Vajay Vaitheeswaran of The Economist, it is providing so far excellent lessons for any company, non-profit, innovation center or educational organization.
Addressing global health and education is just the beginning. Need, Speed, and Greed is laying out how companies must adjust (via lessons from IBM, Google and P&G) or watch the world run you over and out of business.
The one thing Need, Speed, and Greed is making very clear: we are now able to collaborate in a global view with advanced technologies and new open business thinking to solve complex problems around the globe.
This is shaping up to be the kind of book every school kid in America should be reading.
Not long ago I began reading Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration the story of Pixar written by co-fonder Ed Catmull.
On the surface you may consider this a story about animation movies beginning with Toy Story. However, you would be wrong. Some may want this to be a historical look at the company from Lucasfilm and their acquisition by Steve Jobs to the merger with Disney. Others want to see the inside of Pixar as Jobs ran the company.
However this book is about management. And, it does not disappoint.
In many ways my desire to understand the US failure in Vietnam has been a long difficult road. No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War by Gregory Daddis answers many long held questions.
After digesting so many resources in books, documentaries and listening to interviews with veterans, politicians and social leaders during the long duration of the war.
I believe No Sure Victory reveals strong indicators regarding our failure in Vietnam. The focus is the failure of MACV to gather and process data against an established set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) over the long duration of this war.
Daddis documents McNamara’s injection of data gathering (metrics) when LBJ increased America’s commitment to South Vietnam. McNamara’s experience as one of The Wiz Kids seemed to set the stage in his role as Secretary of Defense. Yet our enemy was determined and battle tested. America was fighting a larger, strategic cold war with an emerging China and the established Soviet Union in both Europe and Asia.
Daddis sheds light throughout No Sure Victory not only on the lack of White House direction but how MACV leadership could not adapt to fighting a war of counterinsurgency. The impact of this television war confused the government, media and our country. At the same time Daddis points to key failures in not understanding the full affect of the French Indo-China war regarding counterinsurgency. This lack of understanding established a crippling third leg the US consistently fought to balance against the cold war political spectrum.
The recent pre-release of The Data Science Handbook is a fast, easy read. There is nothing better in business today than the still exploding market of data science. While some marketing statements indicate many are trying data science, here are the voices of recognized data science leaders. I have read my share of data science and big data books as well but like the direction of this pre-release.
Maturing technologies like Hadoop and even MapReduce prove yesterday was the time for every organization, business unit and non-profit to understand how data science is fundamentally changing the game.
Data Science hits your data sweet spot due to the ability of large systems to process your data in real-time. Notice how Microsoft is acquiring data science companies?
Data Science was just in its early stages not more than 10 years ago. Yahoo and Google helped move this forward. Even “legacy” companies like Sears Holdings understands the impact of MapReduce and Hadoop, they are well outside Silicon Valley. Just wait until some great advancements for public health are established by non-profits as a result of implement data science to forecast their business.
There is a great deal of excitement as the full release publication date inches closer. Cannot wait to see this book ship.