The Economy of Connected Intelligence
By: Suff Syed
Tags: Introduction, Agency, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science

The Talent Crisis

The industry is currently witnessing a serious shortage of Data Scientists and Data Strategists/Managers. Anyone with similar PhDs or with validated credits that can prove relevant skills/experience are being sucked up by the Google’s and Baidu’s of the world. The folks who even remotely demonstrate these skills aren’t planning on heading to the Agency world either. Instead, they’re founding their own companies, or heading to Product Companies like Google and Facebook, or working at Startups like Birchbox and Stitch Fix with mature Data Science teams where they’re highly valued and distinctively paid. Attracting and retaining this new wave of talent in a world where breakthrough opportunities and lucrative pay are elsewhere is going to be one of the biggest challenges the Agencies will face — they’re going to have to fight tooth and nail to build great Data teams/capabilities.

Lipstick on a Pig

A few years back when Apple saw phenomenal success with their iPod’s and iPhone’s they emphasized the importance of Design and Customer Experience. Over the next couple of years, Design as a discipline witnessed incredible growth and continues to do so. A big part of the industry saw “Graphic Designers” rebrand themselves as “User Experience Designers” and “Interaction Designers”. This is the exact thing happening in the field of Data Science right now. With the industry seeing a surge in every CEO-CIO-CMO-CTO reaching out to agencies looking for AI expertise, agencies are rebranding their Data Analytics teams under the Data Science name — every Analytics head is now a “Data Science Executive”. Brands, having been comfortable in their own skin over the years, haven’t invested in native Data teams either. The lack of these native skills mean they’re looking to Agencies to fill the gap — and this opportunity simply cannot be met with lies.

The Partnership Fix

Agencies are currently exploring “exclusive partnerships” with the likes of Google and IBM — allowing the agencies to boast access to the best AI tech and product teams to solve client problems. Companies like IBM are motivated to partner with agencies to push their own agenda (Watson) — investing $$$ in Watson COE’s inside agencies because it needs Brands to adopt its platform to gain market share. These exclusive partnerships, however, are a short-term fix and are only as good as the tangible outcome these agencies are capable of delivering. Without the right talent, it’s all smoke and mirrors now if any of these agencies are truly going to deliver these projects requiring an elevated skill set. Fun question to ask the agencies claiming to know and doing AI — How many “real” Data Scientists does your Agency have?

The Business Model Imperative

The challenges for the Agencies don’t just end with a talent crisis — they’re only just the beginning. The biggest challenge agencies face will be in evolving their current business models to build ‘AI-as-a-Service’. A new kind of business model that incorporates a highly collaborative and experimental nature of delivery — with Data becoming the focal point driving business decisions, product/service design, and customer engagement. ‘AI-as-a-Service’ will have to be invented from the ground up to service new client needs in entirely new business environments. Agencies need to personally invest in projects building set pieces (proof of concepts, plug and play solutions) that prove their ability to deliver projects that employ the latest Applied Machine Learning methods; in line with existing product life-cycles to deliver value that can be quantified and show returns.

As AI begins to take center stage, it will force the Agency business to redesign the fundamentals of their existing service models from the ground up. This is why I’m writing The Agency Innovation Playbook — to usher the Agency world in an Economy of Connected Intelligence.