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Learn from Your Analytics Failures

Harvard Business Review

That’s bad news and worse management. In pre-Big Data days, for example, a hotel chain used some pretty sophisticated mathematics, data mining, and time series analysis to coordinate its yield management pricing and promotion efforts. For the most part, local managers followed the yield management rules. Top management’s belief in its brand value and positioning excluded discounters from their competitive landscape.

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How an NBA Team Thinks About Data, Talent, and Pricing

Harvard Business Review

We talk about things like yield management, demand curves, and perishable inventory — factors that dictate our pricing strategies. That way, when the going is good, you can maximize your upside yield on assets like ticket sales and merchandise, and when the team isn’t performing quite as well, you have a hedge in place to protect your downside risk. If you could give your younger self one piece of career advice, what would it be?