Organizational Analytics - Jeanette Blomberg, IBM
Channel: UCIBrenICS
Date: 30/05/2017

Jeanette Blomberg
Principal Research Staff Member
IBM Almaden Research Center

Friday, May 26, 2017

Title: Organizational analytics: The promise of (big) data, machine learning, and predictive analytics 

Abstract: The business press summons organizations to manage their data as a strategic resource, helping to guide such decisions as how best to market to customers, adjust inventory, or balance skill portfolios. Organizations (including civic and not-for-profit) are implored to embrace the promise of (big) data, machine learning, and predictive analytics lest they get left behind. In this talk I will explore some of the issues facing organizations that take up this challenge by drawing upon examples from recent research that focuses on the production of organizational data and the in situ consumption of analytics. I will discuss how different knowledge traditions and practical concerns of variously positioned organizational actors shape the meaning of the analytics and influence the ways in which they can be acted upon. I will conclude with some thoughts about whether the current technological environment of cloud computing, machine learning, and predictive analytics presents new worries and/or possibilities for harnessing technology for human betterment. 

Bio:
Jeanette Blomberg is Principal Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California and adjunct professor at Roskilde University in Denmark. Jeanette is known for her research on ethnography in design processes as outlined in two recent publications Positioning Ethnography within Participatory Design and Reflections on 25 Years of Ethnography in CSCW. In her recent book, An Anthropology of Services, she investigates how services are being conceptualized today and the possible benefits of taking an anthropological perspective on services and their design. Currently her research is focused on organizational analytics where she considers the linkages between human action, digital data production, data analytics, and business or societal outcomes. Prior to assuming her current position, Jeanette was a member of the Work Practice and Technology group at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Director of Experience Modeling research at Sapient Corporation, and Industry-affiliated Professor at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden where in 2011 she was awarded an honorary doctorate. Jeanette has received numerous IBM technical achievement awards and recently was honored with induction into the IBM Academy of Technology. Jeanette received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Davis where she also was a visiting professor and lecturer in cultural anthropology and sociolinguistics.