Big data keeps getting bigger.
With an estimated value of about $300 billion — and projected to flirt with the trillion-dollar mark within a decade — the data analytics market is one of the fastest-growing worldwide.
From Instagram’s algorithm to Amazon’s pricing strategy to a hospital system’s patient records, information storage and analysis enhanced by technologies such as artificial intelligence has disrupted entire industries and altered the way we create, consume, connect and even receive care.
With this sea change come pressing questions of how data should be effectively and ethically harnessed in the pursuit of growth and innovation. For business schools, this presents a challenge and an opportunity.
“We’re committed to preparing graduates to be successful in a professional landscape that is evolving rapidly,” says Terry associate dean Santanu Chatterjee, who heads the college’s Full-Time MBA and Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) programs. “A crucial component is ensuring our academic offerings, faculty research and community outreach embrace the intersection of big data, artificial intelligence and business.”
Data science is a long-established strength of the Terry College, which in addition to the MSBA offers an MBA concentration and undergraduate area of emphasis in analytics, as well as the Master of Marketing Research program, an industry leader in data-centric learning.
In 2023, the college launched the Center for Business Analytics and Insights to unite these efforts and expand opportunities for faculty collaboration and experiential learning. This fall, with support from former Coca-Cola Company CEO Doug Ivester (BBA ’69) and his wife, Kay, the center was elevated and renamed the M. Douglas and V. Kay Ivester Institute for Business Analytics and Insights.
It’s the next chapter in the college’s goal to solidify analytics as a key component of its mission.
“The Ivester Institute creates a unique platform to execute our analytics strategy,” says Chatterjee, “and it enables Terry graduates to be effective leaders within their organizations and communities.”
Across the college, faculty are up to the challenge, pulling back the curtain on big data and ensuring Terry grads are well prepared to thrive in the next era of the Information Age.
Making better decisions
“I’m an economist,” says Chris Cornwell, “so I’ve never not been interested in data.”
As the inaugural director of the Ivester Institute, Cornwell is responsible for coordinating its efforts across Terry departments and majors.
It’s a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly.
“One challenge in communicating what we’re doing is that these terms mean different things to different people,” he says. “You can think of ‘business analytics’ or ‘data analytics’ as category headings that a lot of things go in. And there are so many valuable takes, whether you’re talking to an economist or an accounting person or a marketing person.”
Regardless of who’s talking, better information means “we can develop better stories in response to questions, from predicting outcomes to establishing causal linkages from observational data,” says Cornwell. “Those are all things that would have been much harder even 10 or 20 years ago.”
Indeed, the pace of change over the past few decades has spread interest in — and access to — data from far-flung corners of the academic and business worlds.
“It’s really a story of technology,” Cornwell explains. “Lots of things have been developed along the way, new techniques and better machines to analyze data. And those things have become so widespread. It offers the opportunity for anybody in any discipline to access information.”
The unifying factor across a B-school curriculum, he says, is better understanding of technology’s capabilities, limitations and implications leads to better decision-making by people in leadership roles — which leads to better business.
“Understanding data can help decision-making in any context,” says Cornwell. “So, where this lands with students at every level is being able to learn about how the world works and make better decisions.
“It’s about learning from data,” he continues. “I want students to focus on two kinds of questions. The future — what’s going to happen? And then, what can we do about it? Every person wants to know something about the future and what they can do about it. Who doesn’t care about that?”
Doing the ‘dirty work’
Before she took over as director of the J.M. Tull School of Accounting this summer, Margaret Christ was known far and wide as an analytics advocate.
For her efforts developing data-driven teaching materials that have since been adopted by educators worldwide, she received the American Accounting Association’s Innovation in Accounting Education Award in 2020.
“My objective is for accounting students to develop an analytics mindset — the ability to think critically about a business issue and identify a way to analyze it to solve a problem,” Christ said upon taking the reins at Tull.
“We have worked to infuse data analytics in all of our courses to some extent, and we also have several classes focused on analytics specifically,” she says. “In the last 10 years, the accounting profession has shifted toward really being data-driven.”
In fact, accountants play a key part in the analytics pipeline, Christ explains: they do the “dirty work” of analyzing, interpreting and translating data for decision makers. They are, in a way, the most human component in a world of ones and zeroes.
“For our accounting students, we talk a lot about their key role at the front and back ends of the whole process. They are the ones who can translate the business question into the specific data that needs to be analyzed to answer that question. Then they take the results of the analysis and communicate them to key stakeholders.”
It’s also essential that auditors have a strong understanding of the technologies their clients are using to collect and analyze information, Christ says.
“The assurance providers are the ones verifying that clients’ data is correct and reported appropriately. So they have to understand all of the technologies and analyses their clients are conducting.”
Christ says the Ivester Institute will allow Terry faculty to unite around this complex but crucial component of modern business.
“In each of our departments, we have faculty who are thinking about this quite a bit, but it has been up to us to network and find peers who have similar interests,” she says. “So it will be really exciting to have a more organized meeting place for us to share our knowledge and experiences. It will also help us coordinate our courses in a way that will really benefit our students.”
Living with machines
Jerry Kane has been studying emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence for decades. But even he was awed by the radical advancements of the past few years.
“Generative AI is doing some pretty remarkable stuff that we never thought computers were going to be able to do,” says Kane.
Kane, a digital transformation expert who joined Terry in 2022 as part of a university-wide AI hiring initiative and was named head of the Department of Management Information Systems in January, says this only raises the ceiling of what’s possible.
“We’re in the first inning of a nine-inning game,” he says. “We are only scratching the surface. Partially because the technology is not there yet, but also because we haven’t really figured out the best use cases for it.”
Which is to say: If you think ChatGPT and Gemini are cool, wait till you see what’s next.
No tool has upended data collection and analysis quite like AI. Still, its rise has led to heady questions: How do we make sure it’s free of bias? Can we maintain privacy? And will algorithms ultimately replace the human element?
“We’re at a unique juncture in that we’re shaping these digital tools that are going to have a massive influence on the world,” says Kane. “And unless we think about the social and ethical implications, we could end up with a society that is worse off, rather than better off.”
It’s inevitable that AI will change the work landscape, Kane says, including automating some jobs now done by humans, but it will also create new opportunities and “supercharge” some of the most common careers.
“AI won’t replace doctors,” Kane says. “But doctors who use AI will replace doctors who don’t use AI. AI won’t replace managers, but managers who use AI will replace managers who don’t use AI. And I think you can say that across most fields.”
In fact, a recent study by the International Monetary Fund found AI is likely to impact 40 percent of jobs globally, with the number closer to 60 percent in advanced economies such as the U.S.
The Ivester Institute can help ensure tomorrow’s business leaders are prepared for this shift, says Kane.
“What I can do is try to educate students to maximize the benefits and minimize the detriments. … They’re going to be the ones coming up with regulations and policies and choosing how we use it from a business perspective. It’s important that they have that knowledge, because we’re training the people who are going to be making those decisions.”
