Recently, I caught up with a friend that I have known for 30 years. Today, we are both raising our children. In the 1980’s, we were teenagers in Florida collecting football and baseball cards, going to coin shops to find “rare” or different foreign coins, and of course we were listening to music on records (vinyls for those younger than 30) and CDs. We compared how our childhoods were different than our children’s childhoods. For sure, our children have many more options, opportunities, and avenues to the world than we enjoyed. However, we noted that the young people of today do not have t ..read more

With the 2023 NFL season underway, I want to share the changes that I most recommend for improving the NFL. Many of these would make the game more exciting and add strategy to the game. Strategy and Rule Changes: Goal Line On Side Possession: If a team wants the ball after a kickoff, let them take it at their goal line, maybe even on third down. No more bouncy balls from on-side kicks. If you can drive 99 yards, hats off to you, man. I’d like to see a coach swallow that call. You can still do an on-side kick, but if you want the ball, take it and run the field. 3 Point Conversion: If you ..read more

We are now more reliant than ever on digital systems to manage and control physical systems. We enjoy using systems like Ring to manage the front door and Nest to manage the HVAC system. Even my irrigation system has a digital interface and an app that makes turning on the sprinklers a breeze. Companies, of course, rely on digital system and rules to make decisions in increasingly impactful ways. When digital systems find anomalies, like fraud, the recovery process kicks in, automatically, often without a sanity or statistical check to examine if that anomaly is even believable or should b ..read more

Companies often grapple with the challenges of respecting customer privacy. Although most firms do not seek to cause or do harm, data breaches, inadvertent misuse of data, and unauthorized publishing of data seem to ultimately happen. Data on a social media site, on a shopping site, or from your gym membership may seem sensitive. But, the most sensitive data is surely one’s own, unique DNA. Now, DNA is being publishing, shared, and studied in great ways. Over 1 million Americans have shared their DNA with genealogical sites and many hundreds more do so each week. Researchers published in t ..read more

With the college football in full swing, it is worth a look to see how the teams stack-up, not based on rankings, but based on fan loyalty. Big Data and Data Visualization help us with this and lead to some interesting insights. College football also offers us a great opportunity to look at the Big Data of fandom and the business of college football and even that of universities. Building on my post that looked at NFL fan allegiance by location (see first graphic above), I thought looking at some data visualization of college football allegiance would tell us a bit about who roots for whic ..read more

It seems that 2023 will be go down as the year of AI. We see thousands of new jobs, billions in investment, and a great deal or excitement in how AI will be used in business. In such applications, the focus is often to 1) Replace costly workers 2) Make costly workers more efficient or 3) Achieve greater profitability, given some marketing opportunity. These conditions are not directly seen in a  normal person's life, so it is not surprising to read that personal use of ChatGPT is declining. There are many things we normally do in daily life that would benefit from AI (or at least some ..read more

Fall is in full swing here in Seattle; the first of the maples are turning orange and the summer has quickly cooled. For me, it is a great change to move to the beautiful Pacific Northwest and to be part of a fine institution like the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. The leaves are falling. The rain has begun, and still the Northwest charm continues. In all places, fall is about change. At colleges it is also about new beginnings, making it an exciting time of the year. It is exciting to be part of the new journey that our students are all beginning. For me, I loo ..read more

With the Thanksgiving holiday upon us, it is valuable to reflect on the origin of Thanksgiving and its importance for our nation and families today. Abraham Lincoln made his Thanksgiving proclamation on October 3, 1863, during the midst of the great Civil War. He knew division and the importance of reconciliation like no leader before and figured a day of “Thanksgiving and Praise” would help the divided country immensely. Although not at the scale of some 160 years ago, we see division in our country today. Each day, we read about some hard feelings and conflict, and it is likely that many ..read more

The recent report of the Consumer Price Index topping 6.2% has sent shiver of inflation fears into the market. However, this inflationary hit seems different than the inflation seen in recent episodes of high inflation. Examining this will help us determine who are the winners and losers of the current inflation spike. How is the Current Inflationary Spike Different than Other Inflationary Spikes? This Inflation Spike is Rapid and Severe We went from basically no inflation to 6.2% annual inflation, as per the CPI, in less than a year. Look at the history of inflation since WWII in the foll ..read more

In most every example of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in business, there is a chat bot or robot or algorithm that attempts to replace a human. We surely will see such replacement via AI, but augmentation is also a value approach and is far more attainable and perhaps even more valuable. In augmentation, a AI process considers various options and provides a human improved decision options, based on some deeper consideration or at least with more complexity and optionality involved. There are many things we currently do that are doing regularly that are often conducted with limited considera ..read more