Wiley & sas business Series

 TWO
      Understanding 
Culture 
and Capability 
      I
t ’s interesting to note that many professionals talk of their business 
as “practices.” Business analytics is similar. While best practices exist, 
there ’s no “end-game” as such.  
 1    
 Instead, it ’s all about being better. 
Innovation and differentiation come from improving in some way. 
 Business analytics is a discipline in every sense of the word. It ’s of 
limited value when treated as a series of ad hoc activities. Instead, scale 
requires structure and defi nition. It rarely drives competitive advan-
tage when applied functionally and treated as a diversion. It requires 
focus and attention. And, it is rarely sustainable when it ’s treated as a 
“one-off.” Real success comes from repeatability and reuse. 
 Getting all this right takes time. Some research suggests that estab-
lishing a new self-sustaining culture can take as long as fi ve to seven 
years.  
 2    
 Still, every journey starts with a plan. Whether you ’re support-
ing or driving change, everything ’s impossible without knowing not 
Big Data, Big Innovation: Enabling Competitive Differentiation 
through Business Analytics by Evan Stubbs
Copyright © 2014 by SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

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B I G   D A T A ,   B I G   I N N O V A T I O N
only where the organization  is  but also where it needs to be. For most, 
building this understanding only comes with experience. 
 For someone with a deadline, that ’s probably somewhat disheart-
ening. However, there ’s a shortcut. By learning from others, it ’s pos-
sible to bypass many of the dead ends that create delays. Why guess, 
when there are so many great examples out there? 
 Part Two describes two models to frame organizational transfor-
mation. Everything starts with culture and capability. Without the 
right capability, even the easiest things are impossible. Vision without 
the ability to execute is simply a good idea. Without the right culture, 
however, capability is meaningless. Being able to do something doesn ’t 
mean much if there ’s no interest in doing it. 
 Achieving real differentiation is impossible without both. As 
such, these models form the framework that describes how organiza-
tions harness their capabilities and use them to innovate. As shown 
in Figure    P2.1    , they affect how organizations create value from infor-
mation. They affect how organizations create value from business 
analytics through  the value of business analytics , as covered in Chapter 
6. They affect how organizations treat their human capital through 
 the SMART model , as covered in Chapter 7. And, they affect how 
organizations innovate through  the innovation engine , as covered in 
Chapter 8. 
   The cultural imperative , covered in Chapter 3, focuses on the behav-
iors and attitudes of high-performing organizations. It outlines the fi ve 
perspectives organizations go through on their way to differentiation 
through business analytics. At a minimum, every organization should 
aim to achieve at least the third level within this model. Anything less 
leads to ineffi ciencies, delays, and unacceptable risk. 
  The intelligent enterprise , covered in Chapter 4, focuses on the tech-
nical characteristics of organizations as they transition from chaos to 
the intelligent enterprise. It applies more to larger organizations, ones 
that are big enough to justify centralized technology infrastructure. 
For these organizations, anything less than the top level should be 
seen as underperforming.  
 3    
 
 Together, they refl ect an organization ’s ability to treat information 
as an active competitive differentiator rather than just a passive driver 
for better decision making. 

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