Analytical Leadership in Business Salon for Faculty

The explosive growth of data and technology presents challenges and opportunities to leaders in all fields.  In business, it has changed nearly every major activity, from marketing and selling to customers, to sourcing materials and producing products, managing investment and financial resources, and hiring, developing and evaluating employees.  Even the most fundamental everyday actions of communicating, managing, and making decisions are rich with data and enabled by technology.  In many ways, the very nature of business leadership may be changing as a result of the volume of data produced by, or available to, leaders in business and the near ubiquitous access to the technology tools needed to use, or misuse, it.

A Salon on Analytical Leadership will explore these issues primarily from two perspectives.  Leading analytics will seek a better understanding of the unique challenges facing leaders in roles such as Chief Analytics Officer and Chief Data Officer, and the essential characteristics and behaviors of individuals who are most successful in these new and dynamic c-suite roles.  Leading analytically will examine the changing nature of business leadership, in its many and varied forms and levels, in a world where data and technology are ubiquitous and essential to business success.

The event will feature a talk by Tom Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology at Babson College, a Fellow at the MIT Center for Digital Business, and independent senior advisor to Deloitte Analytics.  Tom is author of Competing on Analytics (with Jeanne G. Harris) and more than 270 other books and articles, including his latest book All In on AI.  The agenda will also include ample time for open discussion of current activities, future interests, and potential collaborations in this space.

The Salon is intended to begin building a community of interest and fostering the exchange of ideas at UVA on the topic of analytical leadership in business, so that, in the future, we may pursue multidisciplinary research, advance teaching and learning, inform corporate practice, and improve community understanding on these topics.

The Salon will be held on April 21, 2023 from 12:30-3:30 pm at the Darden School of Business. The event is open to UVA faculty only and seating is limited. Lunch will be included. Pre-registration is required. 

This event is organized by the UVA Darden-Data Science Collaboratory for Applied Data Science (DCADS), with the support of the Darden School of Business, the School of Data Science, and the McIntire School of Commerce. For additional information, please contact Marc Ruggiano.