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Big Data's Human Component

Harvard Business Review

A tool is an enabler, facilitator, accelerator and magnifier of human capability, not its replacement or surrogate — though artificial intelligence engines like Watson and WolframAlpha (or more likely their descendants) might someday change that. Any fool, or mortgage banker, can use a spreadsheet and calculate a Black-Scholes equation.

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What an Economist Brings to a Business Strategy

Harvard Business Review

Google generates most of its revenue through an auction-based system of selling ads that was developed by two engineers but validated by its chief economist, Hal Varian, a former consultant to the company who was also the first Dean of the School of Information Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley.