Rama Ramakrishnan
Jul 22, 2017 · 1 min read

George,

Have you seen this role in action often? If so, have you found it to be effective in addressing the question you lay out in the title of your article?

That’s an interesting question. While I haven’t seen someone formally play this role, as I think back to successful projects, the data scientist or analyst on the team has embodied the qualities you describe.

Should we have a formal “Research Lead” role? The benefits you list are real but I’d worry that the data scientist would then make less of an effort to talk to the business and just rely on the “Research Lead” as the conduit for everything.

In an ideal world, the data scientist would actually play this role since the ‘magic’ of having all these different aspects be swirling around in the same brain can’t be overstated.

Thanks for sharing. Certainly, something to ponder.

    Rama Ramakrishnan

    Written by

    MIT Professor, AI/ML entrepreneur/advisor. Prev: Founder/CEO CQuotient, SVP Data Science Salesforce, Chief Scientist/VP Oracle Retail, McKinsey. MIT PhD.