Interview with Greg LaBlanc: Data Strategy Summer Research Program

July 08, 2020 (San Francisco)

Last week, we had the opportunity to interview Gregory LaBlanc, the professor of our Data Strategy Summer Research Program. Greg is a renowned professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business as well as is a lecturer for HEC Paris Executive Education. We are so grateful to be able to work with him and have our students gain invaluable knowledge from his class. We asked Greg about the importance of data science and his experiences teaching the research program so far. Here’s what he had to say:

Why does data science matter to students today?

“Business is all about making decisions. In every business, every single person in that organization, from the CEO all the way down to the front line salesperson is making decisions all day. The health of the business is a function of the quality of those decisions. You make good decisions, you thrive. You make bad decisions, and you fail.

Decisions can be made based on gut, they can be made based on intuition and instinct, or they can be based on evidence and data. As a scientific approach that penetrates to all aspects of the business, you have to know how to deal with data… You have to understand data regardless of what role you have in your organization… You have to understand how data can improve decision making…”

What has impressed you the most about these students so far?

“These students are curious. These students are hungry. They want to learn. They’re impatient, they’re not content to wait until they get to graduate school in their late 20s to learn this. This is content that I give to senior executives, to executive MBAs, part-time MBAs, full time MBAs. This is the kind of material that C-level people are being exposed to. So they know that, and they appreciate it and they’re excited about it. They know it’s not just simply learning how to code… this is about how do you add value, how do you become an important part of the business world.”

Data science is incredibly important and our students know that. They continue to impress us and we are so excited to see them finish their research projects over the next few weeks.