In this era of the software-driven business, we’re told “data is the new oil”, and that predictive analytics and machine intelligence will extract actionable insights from this valuable resource and revolutionize the world as we know it. Yet, 2016 brought three highly visible failures in this predictive view of the world: the UK’s Brexit plebiscite; the Colombian referendum on FARC; and finally, the U.S. presidential election. What did these scenarios have in common? They all dealt with human behavior. This got me thinking that there might be lessons to be learned that are relevant to analytics.
