Every major company has or will soon have a data science program. Most fail, expensively, imperiling their executive sponsors. Unfortunately, executives have been misled to focus on the latest buzzwords. Although buzzwords change-big data, data science, machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence -the distraction from fundamentals manifests as a predictable trajectory from exuberant program launch, to stagnation, to awkward decommissioning. After architecting data science programs at over a dozen companies, across sectors and scales, Dr. Elser has formulated a reliable framework for successful data science programs. Surprisingly, software and algorithms are secondary. Rather, the key is understanding how the available data aligns to the problem to be solved. The business executive understands the problem sufficiently to enforce this alignment, while data scientists act on it. But executives tend to underestimate their role and thereby fail to construct the necessary connective tissue with their data scientists. This book provides business executives with a concrete exercise, populating a "Master Table," accessible to nontechnical managers and data scientists, which serves as the connective tissue between them. Rather than teach a diluted version of data science, this book describes how to start projects and how to detect and fix problems-the moments when leadership is critical. Insights are provided through real world examples, including a Playbook featuring common projects. The intended audience is executives (C-suite through VP). However, ambitious mid-level managers and data scientists will also benefit.

This book presents the case for building brands effectively and optimally using AI, thereby enhancing the overall value of the organization.Brand building is believed to be a long-term activity and has lost prominence in this current age of venture capital valuations. In reality, brand building is a competitive advantage that organizations can leverage to multiply their value. Artificial intelligence (AI) on the other hand, is a recent phenomenon and enables organizations reduce errors, build efficiencies and increase profitability, thereby freeing their human capital to perform more intellectual tasks. This book presents the case for building brands effectively and optimally using AI, thereby enhancing the overall value of the organization. This book is ideal for entrepreneurs, investors, CEO's, brand and marketing heads of organizations as it provides them with pathways of using AI to build strong brands and thereby create value. It could also be used as a textbook in courses on Brand Management and as a supplemental text in Marketing Management courses. It is especially relevant in the current environment, where many enterprises are being created and funded by professionals who lack a marketing background.

Ascend Your Start-up is a winner of the New York Book Festival.Wall Street Journal Best Seller Ascend Your Start-up: Conquer the 5 Disconnects to Accelerate Growth is an industry-defining panacea for start-ups who have stalled out on their journey to the top of the mountain. Dedicated to her late grandmother, author Helen Yu inhales multiple generations of wisdom and exhales a revolutionary framework for tech founders and CEOs that enables their businesses to scale faster and fearlessly. From Yu's 15 years of first-hand experience in tech start-ups, readers will learn the 5 fundamental growth disconnects that trap start-ups in the cliffside, keep them from reaching the summit and touching the sky. Ascend Your Start-up also empowers founders and CEOs to self-reflect and grow, posing a thoughtfully architected set of 26 essential questions you can ask yourself in order to scale your business. Inspiration flows freely through the book's pages as Helen draws parallels between the journey of growing a start-up and her sacred promise made to her grandmother to climb Mt. Everest. You will learn: Industry-specific, highly experienced advice for tech start-ups Fundamental wisdom on the 5 disconnects that prevent a start-up from ascending Turning an idea into a product and moving it to the market Taking a marketed product to scale Inspirational guidance for tech start-ups facing the emotions and challenges of growing Ascend Your Start-up is the profound answer to the question every start-up has asked themselves: "How do we get to the top?"

Open the doors to the world of branding and artificial intelligence, the future of building efficient revenue! Unlike anything else out there, the book is an authentic and lucid representation of what branding is and the role it plays with artificial intelligence in the success of businesses. The book would be singularly profound to entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, brand strategists, students, and anyone aspiring to take a hungry bite out of the knowledge repository built from first-hand experiences of creating a brand from scratch and running it successfully in the digital age. Highlights: Explains in-depth theories, tools, and models explaining the core ingredients of creating a successful brand; Discusses how branding on an organizational and personal level is directly proportional to profit and return on investment along with measuring tools; Includes case studies that dissect successful and unsuccessful marketing strategies of huge brands; Covers the role of AI in branding, with its potential in facilitating companies in achieving their goals through targeted marketing.

Business-IT alignment and information technology-enabled innovation are essential for firm performance and competitive advantage. Over the last 30 years, alignment and innovation literature streams have grown and become important areas of inquiry in the Information Systems field. However, both literature streams have remained separate, and it is unclear where and how the two streams overlap. None of the existing reviews have systematically examined this overlap or how each literature stream informs the other. This monograph bridges this gap and presents findings from a review of the alignment and innovation literature streams published between 1990 and 2020. The authors summarize approaches, challenges, and opportunities seen in the alignment and innovation literature streams. The analysis reveals that alignment scholars tend to overlook the complexities inherent in the process of innovating and view innovation as a black box. Meanwhile, innovation scholars assume different organizational components during the innovation process seamlessly work together to support alignment. The authors conclude that scholars in both camps should consider undertaking studies that examine aligning and innovating as interdependent processes: aligning involves coordination and cooperation among business units, and, in many cases, innovations are needed to achieve alignment. Similarly, innovating with information technology jolts the organization out of its previous alignment and requires aligning in parallel to innovating to restore alignment. Information Technology Alignment and Innovation: 30 Years of Intersecting Research provides guidance to both scholars and practitioners interested in alignment and IT-enabled innovation.

The purpose of Process Theory: Background, Opportunity, and Challenges is to promote the use of process theory as an essential part of the body of knowledge relative to information systems (IS) which should be nurtured and expanded. To do this, this monograph addresses why process theory is important, how it can potentially enhance the discipline, and what needs to be tackled to make the development and application of process theory routine and useful. Process Theory: Background, Opportunity, and Challenges elaborates on the nature of theory, process, and their application to IS knowledge. While there is not an easy infrastructure for investing in this type of research and this monograph provides an initial piece around which the many pieces of infrastructure which are needed can be created. This monograph is aimed primarily at doctoral students, early career academics, and any other scholars who have not had a chance to focus on process as a component of their conceptual tool kit. It is intended to be helpful for those who intend to use process theory in their own research but also for those wishing to confidently review, promote, or just understand work in this area. It is hoped that this monograph will serve as a basis for invention of new process theory and new tools for creating, testing, and evaluating such theory.