Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results

Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results by Thomas Davenport, Jeanne Harris, and Robert Morrison (list price: $29.95; 2010 Harvard Business School Publishing).

Analytics at Work is billed as a how to guide for managers to "effectively deploy analytics in their day-to-day" operations (from the inside cover). Though I enjoyed the book, I don't believe that a reasonable person could say that it lives up to the promise. Instead, Davenport and his co-authors provide a very general framework that lacks the advertised day-to-day details required for deployment.

I found the book to be interesting and quite useful from a "oh, I hadn't thought of that..." perspective. However, I'm not sure that there is much original material here beyond the general framework -- most of which was presented in an earlier work by the same authors. Though I wouldn't recommend this book for serious analytic how-to, it would be a good read for someone seeking a general overview of the topic in a reasonably non-technical format.

For me, the measure of a book's contribution to my understanding of a topic is the number of marginal notes I make as I read. In this particular volume, I didn't make many marginal notes. I'm still very much of fan of Thomas Davenport; the quality of his thought on the topic of business analytics is top notch. Analytics at Work is still worth a quick read, especially if this is your first exposure to Davenport's framework for business analytics.

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