McKiernan Family Faculty Fellow Sam Ransbotham forgives you for thinking of him as the Carroll School鈥檚听. He鈥檚 certainly not the athlete Forrest was鈥攈e says his soccer career ended in high school. But like Forrest, he鈥檚 a southerner鈥攁 Georgian鈥攚ho seems to pop up everywhere.
As you鈥檇 expect with a business school professor, you can find Ransbotham in the classrooms in Fulton Hall and in the pages of the professional journals in his field鈥攊nformation systems. You can also run across him writing about IT for practitioners and interested laypeople as a blogger for the听MIT听Sloan Management Review. On top of that, he has been instrumental in helping to redesign the Carroll School鈥檚 M.B.A. curriculum, bringing听a greater focus on data analytics.
With the changes to the M.B.A. program,听Ransbotham听said, the school is trying to equip all its M.B.A.s with the skills to thrive in a data-deluged era. 鈥淭oday, everybody in business needs to know data and analytics,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o we鈥檝e put in place a four-course sequence鈥擯ieter Vanderwerf teaches methodology, Rob Fichman teaches analytics strategy, George Wyner teaches structuring and querying data, and I teach analytics tools鈥攖o help our students build the data skills they need.
鈥淚t鈥檚 easy for people to get bamboozled by a bunch of statistics words. We want our students to be able to say, 鈥業鈥檓 not so sure about that.鈥欌��
That skeptical attitude鈥擨鈥檓 not so sure about that鈥攖ypifies Ransbotham鈥檚 cast of mind. He鈥檚 unusual among IT experts in that he鈥檚 not an evangelist for a future in which we鈥檒l have outsourced all our mundane tasks to personal robots, miniature drones, and driverless cars. If anything, he鈥檚 a contrarian who is as likely to point out the downside of some IT development as he is to sing hosannas to it.
Asked about the benefits of virtual private networks, for example, he notes that while a VPN masks someone鈥檚 online browsing, it also may make that person a more attractive target. He points out that a VPN, in effect, says to a hacker, 鈥淟ook, this person must be trying to hide something valuable.鈥� Few people, after all, feel a need to cloak their visits to the听New York Times听website.听
THE UFO LESSON
That鈥檚 the sort of insight Ransbotham discusses in his听MIT Sloan Management Reviewblog too. His most recent post,听听highlights what seems a ridiculous and puzzling phenomenon: UFO sightings have increased exponentially over the last 40 years. By his reckoning, this isn鈥檛 because an alien invasion is imminent. It鈥檚 because reporting sightings is so much easier, thanks to the Internet and the National UFO Reporting Center. When something is easy, people do it鈥攅specially if they can make a little harmless mischief while they鈥檙e at it.
The lesson for business people isn鈥檛 that they should ignore reports of UFOs. Rather, they should step back and think critically about the collection of the data itself. 鈥淲e have much more data than ever before,鈥� Ransbotham writes. 鈥淏ut managers must be careful to understand how the data was generated to be able to make good decisions.鈥�
In that vein, a sensible response to the uptick in reported UFO sightings wouldn鈥檛 be to start buying up rental properties in alien-friendly locales like听听or听. But it might be to invest in movies and video games with extraterrestrial themes (since some people clearly have time on their hands and an interest in the outr茅).听
Likewise, consider Ransbotham鈥檚 new initiative on artificial intelligence at the听MIT Sloan Management Review.
Hypesters prattle about how AI will make for a future so bright听听while Jeremiahs prophesy it鈥檒l bring about a dystopia where few people have jobs. Ransbotham sees the prospects differently. He鈥檚 not so much worried about AI sapping employment, though he acknowledges that it may replace a goodly portion of the jobs of, say, radiologists and mortgage processors or, closer to home, educators. He鈥檚 more concerned that the greater speed it brings to business鈥攍ike the ability to process mortgage applications overnight鈥攚ill introduce new risks. Managers,听, 鈥渕ay not have the opportunity to intervene before the money is gone from a risky loan.鈥�
More broadly, as firms rush to move at the speed of AI, they may careen out of control. 鈥淭he breakneck pace may reward risky behavior as organizations excel鈥攗ntil they crash,鈥� he writes. 鈥淎 breakneck pace is called 鈥榖reakneck鈥� for a reason.鈥� 听听听
In addition to his blog posts, Ransbotham also oversees surveys of IT professionals conducted by the听Sloan Review听and writes reports on the findings. The听, published this past spring, is titled 鈥淎nalytics as a Source of Business Innovation鈥� and addresses how companies are using data and analytics to devise new products, services, and processes and thus deriving competitive advantage from their data smarts.
REAL INNOVATION
The report offers the example of Bridgestone Americas, the tire company, which is remaking its operations to exploit its burgeoning supply of data. Its analytics team is using data to identify the best locations for new stores and to automate the provision of inventory to the company鈥檚 2,220 stores. The latter enables Bridgestone to have the right tires in stock when customers need them and not carry excess inventory鈥攁 substantial cost when you鈥檙e selling something bulky and heavy like tires. The Bridgestone team is also seeking ways to prompt customers to come in for new tires based on the odometer readings of their cars. As Ransbotham and his coauthor write in the report: 鈥淭his new reliance on analytics to inform executive decision-making and to develop new services reflects a cultural shift for Bridgestone鈥檚 operations in the United States.鈥�
In addition to his work with the听Sloan Review, Ransbotham does conventional academic publishing. Late last year, for example, he and听Fichman, who chairs the Carroll School鈥檚 Information Systems department, and two colleagues from other universities wrote an essay for听Information Systems Research听in which they explored vulnerabilities created by digital advances. The first line of the essay epitomizes Ransbotham鈥檚 way of thinking: 鈥淚nformation technology,鈥� it says, 鈥渋ncites hyperbole.鈥�
They identify four ways in which IT can both bring anguish and create new efficiencies at the same time: increased visibility, enhanced cloaking, increased interconnectedness, and decreased costs.
Greater visibility, for example, comes from the data trail each of us creates as we not only browse the internet but increasingly use devices such as smartphones, fitness trackers, and web-connected thermostats and home-security cameras. 鈥淭he negative side of enhanced visibility is that it can reveal information that people and organizations would prefer to keep鈥攁nd often have a right to keep鈥攈idden,鈥� the professors write. Someone who hacked into your thermostat, for example, would have a pretty good idea of when you weren鈥檛 home.
The essay, which suggests promising lines of future inquiry for IT researchers, ends on cautionary note: 鈥淩esearch tends to gravitate towards positive aspects of innovation while negative aspects receive less attention.鈥�
Or, as Ransbotham put it in a conversation: 鈥淚t鈥檚 easy to talk about all the positives of technology, but there鈥檚 a lot of negatives, and we need to think about and mitigate those, too.鈥�
Tim Gray is a freelance writer and a writing instructor at the Carroll School.
Photography by Gary Gilbert.