Business schools around the world are parrots. They repeat the same Academic drivel a million times expecting to fool the students of their unique contribution. At Ascencia business school, we have the largest DBA department of any university, with some researchers focusing their dissertation on data science.
By that authority we happen to have some unique opinions on the practice of data science and would wean away from repeating academic principles from textbooks:

1. Data science leads to insights which we weren’t looking for:

When we crunch data and structure the results in a readable format, it presents us with an opportunity to coalesce all the data points to make a single observation. The quality of a data scientist’s observation is predicated upon the number of inputs considered. Those inputs, if generated in disparate time observations severally, would preclude the opportunity for unified judgement and thereby lead to insights loss.

2. An organization needs to choose mindfully the sources of data.

Employee interactions with clients is a source of data which can be leveraged for greater insights. There should be clarity on what is being sought and how it can be captured. Sales enablement tools have become a useful way to not only provide sales collaterals but to also train staff at various points of data collection.