Thursday, April 10, 2014

The Peter Principle

http://www.biztechmagazine.com/article/2014/03/houston-astros-use-data-analytics-drive-ticket-sales?utm_content=buffer09c17&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

http://mlb.si.com/2014/04/09/houston-astros-get-0-0-television-rating/

The woeful Houston Astros baseball team, destined to inhabit the cellar of the American League for the forseeable future, are profiled at the first link, above, that highlights their immersion in big data, the use of business analytics to make all the decisions for the team, both on and off the field. They have big plans to field the lowest salaried team, and at the same time, somehow leverage data about their fans to enhance ticket sales and increase season ticket sales.

The second link shows how well things are going. A zero Nielsen rating for a recent game. Nobody watched on a Nielsen measured TV. The pregame show had a higher rating, 0.2. Wowwee.

What does this tell us about running a baseball team by non-baseball people? In any business, experience counts. Knowledge counts. Blindly relying upon unproven relationships between poorly understood data is a sure recipe for failure.

This goes on in any number of businesses today, and it's a mark of the rotting away of respect for the knowledge of those that know, and the misguided trusting of quantitative analysis that has too often come a cropper.



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