A.I and Data Science: The end of business as we know it? RoundPegSearch with Mike Bugembe Boardroom Session November 2019

Recent research by McKinsey highlighted the profit margin improvement of businesses with a strong A.I. and Data Science strategy versus businesses with a poor strategy or no strategy. Depending on sector the improvement was at least 5% and in the case of retail nearly 10%.

Yet very few businesses have a defined strategy or even a plan to get one. 

A few days ago we hosted 16 business leaders at our second Data Science Boardroom Session this year. Our speaker was Mike Bugembe, formerly the Chief Data Officer at Just Given and rated by The Guardian as one of the top digital influencers in the UK. 

Mike’s recent book Cracking the Data Code is an Amazon best seller, he has spoken on stage with Stephen Hawking and Garry Kasparov and has been featured in Forbes, The Independent and The Huffington Post. 

His work is now focussed on showing business leaders how to create and structure a data-first culture driven by the leadership team and not by ‘some guy in IT’. 

Mike is especially interested in behavioural economics, specifically what triggers people to take a particular action. Recently he has worked on projects to reduce knife crime, employee well being, 

Highlights of Mike’s presentation were: 

• Many leaders are still ignoring data science and A.I. believing its not right for their business or they’re too small to be able to consider it. 
• The majority of strategies are still focussed on growth - from data led marketing activities, to reactive pricing mechanisms. 
• The businesses that are getting the best results are using their data science team to help make better decisions in almost every facet of the business, examples included how to identify toxic employees, 
• One general business lesson is that very often businesses don’t take the time to consider what the key questions and measures are in their business (outside of sales and marketing) 
• Mike shared a number of use-case examples 
• The most effective implementations of data science are in businesses where the strategy blends human and computer
• Where computers are left alone they are susceptible to errors that people with experience wouldn’t make but to a computer might seem perfectively logical
• Only a few businesses are adding externally sourced data to internal data records. 
• A key challenge can happen when long held choices and beliefs are contradicted by the data and so there is resistance to either trusting the data or using it
• How a data science team should be structured so that the important components of obtaining data, organising data and then presenting data are done effectively
• So far the implementations of A.I. in recruitment processes have been flawed not because the algorithms are flawed but because the data available is tainted by human’s biases and thus the algorithms simply amplify these biases. 
• Too many people think of A.I. as an out of control ‘Terminator’ style 

Feedback from Mike’s presentation: 

“My understanding of the purpose and critical business benefits of A.I. increased 100%”

“Insightful and inspirationally delivered” 

“One of the challenges when running your own business is creating the time to look beyond the day to day, so as to get inspired and achieve the ability to look at what you do, and how you do it with fresh eyes. The boardroom sessions organised by RoundPeg address exactly that challenge”

We host boardroom sessions quarterly bringing in speakers who are subject matter experts in topics that help business leaders get new perspectives and insights. Please contact us if you’re interested in joining us for one of these sessions in the future.