MIT Sloan Management Review Article on What Separates Analytical Leaders From Laggards?

Information technology changes at a rapid pace, but organizational adoption of it often doesn’t. Fourteen years ago, one of us (Davenport) wrote an article about how companies were beginning to compete on analytics. In the years that followed, data and analytics seemed to become embedded in business culture. Whether these tools were called analytics, big data, or artificial intelligence, organizations of all sizes and types supposedly embraced these resources as a way to improve decision-making and enhance offerings.

How to explain, then, a recent Deloitte survey of U.S. executives that found that only 10% of companies are competing on their analytical insights, and that the most popular tool for analyzing data — used by 62% of companies responding to the survey — is the spreadsheet?