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Let us begin by asking four questions. First, do you want to recreate yourself?
Are you ready for a data-driven digital world? Do you wish to use data for personal use? Do you wish to find a well-paying job?
If your response to the above contains a few ‘yeses’’, please read on further to be ready for a digital future. Let us deal with each of the questions above one by one.
Why should one recreate oneself that too in the current circumstances? What do we think a PhD in Physics does? It turns out that many of them are academics; however, not all are in academia. Some of them could be found developing algorithms used in equity trading, while others have gravitated towards data science. It is not unusual to find a Physics PhD training some data scientists on using TensorFlow to build machine learning algorithms. So why do Physics PhDs find it more interesting to develop algorithms to power financial trades or decipher customer propensity scores?
While the choice of work or trade is largely a personal one, it does appear that there is something in the financial world or the data world that is able to attract Physics PhDs to gravitate towards them. Physics PhDs also bring with them strong training in methods and tools that seem amenable to the data world. Now, if a Physics PhD is able to recreate herself to suit a new line of activity, should we not think about recreating ourselves to become amenable to the new age fields of work such as data science. We can do this with a structured program in business analytics and do not necessarily need a PhD in Physics.
The second question is about being ready for a data-driven digital world. The nature and basis of competition amongst firms have changed over the decades. In the decade of 1980s, superior competitive positioning adopted by a firm potentially led to it enjoying a competitive advantage for a period. Once the positioning aspect was exploited by many firms, the notion of being competitive gravitated towards possessing specific or unique resources. Slowly, this too was adopted by many firms and hence the notion of being competitive moved on towards possessing ‘knowledge’ assets. Now the notion of being competitive seems to hinge on insights obtained from data by a firm.
Hence more and more firms are increasingly spending training dollars to make their employees data-oriented. Moreover, some of these firms have ‘being a data-driven organization’ as part of their future vision. Hence it becomes important for all of us to assess ourselves and be ready for a data-driven world so that we are continuously employable.
The third question is about being personally adept at work and in life by being data-savvy. We live in the most interesting times of human history. The digital age has ushered in the “data era”, an era in which data has become a commodity that is more valuable than oil and gold. The amount of data produced globally on a daily basis is unprecedented and is expected to only keep on increasing as more of the world’s population gets more access to the internet. Hence, the big question is whether we can use this data available to usher in a smart way of living. Be it in personal lifestyle, or in savings and financing, or in managing work-life balance, or even making career decisions. Eventually, it may not be a bad idea to come up with a personal living index to manage our personal life. All it needs is some degree of exposure to business analytics.
The last question about finding a well-paying job should interest all of us. All estimates suggest that data scientists are in significant demand everywhere and that they also make a tidy sum annually. So the question to ask is, are we ready for a data science job? The hiring process at most Analytics firms and the Analytics functions of leading firms is quite stringent, to say the least. The Business Analytics program at Prestige University aims to provide you with an education that will prepare you to be future-ready in a digital world.
What makes Prestige business analytics different from other programs? How would it be if we do not pre-suppose your antecedents? In other words, you could have graduated from a wide variety of graduation options that are available. Instead, we help you build a foundation for business analytics in the initial part of the curriculum. In fact, our curriculum has been co-created with leading academics and industry experts. The faculty we have onboard come from leading institutions and have many years of experience behind them.
Our ecosystem consists of advisory board members and industry experts, and faculty members who would be available to mentor the progress of our participants from their foundation stages to more nuanced data courses that would culminate in a capstone project.
After the rigorous foundation stage, we shall offer a five-month industry internship to all our participants. This should provide much-needed exposure to the participants on practices followed in the data world. Post the internship; the participants shall go through advanced modelling courses in machine learning, deep learning and other related areas. The idea is to make our participants ready for a data-driven digital world and also be continuously employable.
