Hiring new figures to lead the data revolution It has been said that this new wave of exponential technologies will threaten a lot of jobs, both blue and white-collar ones. But if from one hand many roles will disappear, from the other hand in the very short-term we are observing new people coming out from the crowd to lead this revolution and set the pace. These are the people who really understand both the technicalities of the problems as well as have a clear view of the business implications of the new technologies and can easily plan how to embed those new capabilities in enterprise contexts. Hence, I am going to briefly present three of them, i.e., the , the and the . Sad to be said, I never heard about a ‘ ’, but for some strange reasons, the role is usually called either ‘ ’ or (as if data scientist won’t deserve someone at C-level to lead their efforts). Chief Data Officer (CDO) Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO) Chief Robotics Officer (CRO) Chief of Data Science Head of Data Science ‘Chief Analytics Officer’ Let’s see then who they are and what they would be useful for. I. The Chief Data Officer (CDO) A slide taken from one of the speakers at the illustrating business drivers and capabilities and how they related to the CDO job. CDO Summit in London Apparently, it is a new role born in a lighter form straight after the financial crisis springing from the need to have a central figure to deal with technology, regulation and reporting. Therefore, the CDO is basically the guy who acts as a (tech guy) (data guy) and takes care of data quality and data management. liaison between the CTO and the CAO/Head of Data Science Actually, its final goal is . to guarantee that everyone can get access to the right data in virtually no time In that sense, a CDO is the guy in charge of ‘democratizing data’ within the company. It is not a static role, and it evolved from simply being a to being a , with the tasks of defining data management policies and business priorities, shaping not only the data strategy, but also the frameworks, procedures, and tools. In other words, he is a kind of ‘ ’ (if we agree on the distinctions between ). facilitator data governor Chief of Data Engineers data scientists, who actually deal with modeling, and data engineers, who deal with data preparation and data flow “The difference between a CIO and CDO (apart from the words data and information…) is best described using the bucket and water analogy. The CIO is responsible for the bucket, ensuring that it is complete without any holes in it, the bucket is the right size with just a little bit of spare room but not too much and its all in a safe place. The CDO is responsible for the liquid you put in the bucket, ensuring that it is the right liquid, the right amount and that’s not contaminated. The CDO is also responsible for what happens to the liquid, and making the clean vital liquid is available for the business to slake its thirst.” (Caroline Carruthers, Chief Data Officer Network Rail, and Peter Jackson, Head of Data Southern Water) I don’t want to get into what a Chief Information Officer does and how he differs from a CDO, a CTO, a CRO, or any other roles, but if you want to know more I highly recommend ’s free ebook ( ). Julie Steele see here Interestingly enough, the role of the CDO as we described it is both and . It spans indeed across the entire organization even though the CDO still needs to report to someone else in the organizational chart. Who the CDO reports to will be largely determined by the organization he is operating in. Furthermore, it is also relevant to highlight that a CDO can be found more likely in larger organizations rather than small startups. The latter type is indeed usually set up to be data-driven (with a ) and therefore the CDO function is already embedded in the role who designs the technological infrastructure/data pipeline. vertical horizontal forward-looking approach It is also true that not every company has a CDO, so how do you decide to eventually get one? Well, simply out of internal necessity, strict incoming regulation, and because all your business intelligence projects are failing because of data issues. If you have any of these problems, you might need someone who pushes the “ ” principle as the data approach to be adopted throughout the entire organization, who considers data as a company asset and wants to set the fundamentals to allow fast trial and error experimentations. And above all, someone . fail-fast who is centrally liable and accountable for anything about data A CDO is then the end-to-end data workflow responsible and it oversees the entire data value chain. Finally, if the CDO will do his job in a proper way, you’ll be able to see two different outcomes: first of all, the board will stop asking for quality data and will have clear in mind what every team is doing. Second, and most important, a good CDO aims to create an organization where a CDO has no reasons to exist. It is counterintuitive, but basically, a CDO will do a great job when the company won’t need a CDO anymore because . every line of business will be responsible and liable for their own data A good CDO aims to create an organization where a CDO has no reasons to exist. In order to reach his final goal, he needs to prove from the beginning that not investing in higher data quality and frictionless data transfer might be a source of inefficiency in business operations, resulting in non-optimized IT operations and making compliance as well as analytics much less effective. II. The Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO) Image Credit: pexels.com If the CDO is somehow an already consolidated role, the CAIO is nothing more than a mere industry hypothesis (not sure I have seen one yet, although the strong ongoing discussions between AI experts and sector players — see and for two opposite views on the topic). Moreover, the creation of this new role highlights the emergence of two different schools of thought of enterprise AI, i.e., , and a clear cost-benefit analysis to understand which approach will work better is still missing. here here centralized vs decentralized AI implementation My two cents are that elevating AI to be represented at the board level means to really become an AI-driven company and embed AI into every product and process within your organization — and I bet not everyone is ready for that. So, let’s try to sketch at a glance the most common themes to consider when talking about a CAIO: ( : a CAIO is someone who should be able to connect the dots and (this is ’s view, by the way). If you also want to have a deeper look at what a CAIO job description would look like, the article by ; Responsibilities what he does) apply AI across data and functional silos Andrew Ng check out here Tarun Gangwani ( ): you only need to do it if you understand that and business processes; Relevance should you hire a CAIO? AI is no longer a competitive advantage to your business but rather a part of your core product ( ): first and more important, a CAIO has to be a ‘guiding light’ within the AI community because he will be one of your decisive assets . This means that he needs to be highly respected and trusted, which is something that comes only with a strong understanding of . Finally, being a cross-function activity, he needs to have the right balance between and (he needs to support different lines of business); Skills how do you pick the right guy? to win the AI talent war foundational technologies and data infrastructure willingness to risk and experiment to foster innovation attention to product and company needs ( ): there are two main risks, which are i) the misalignment between technology and business focus (you tend to put more attention on technology rather than business needs), and ii) every problem will be tackled with AI tools, which might not be that efficient (this type of guys are super trained and will be highly paid, so it is natural they will try to apply AI to everything). Risks is a smart move hiring a CAIO? Where do I stand on that? Well, my view is that a CAIO is something which makes sense, . It is an essential position to allow a smooth transition for companies who strive for becoming AI-driven firms, but I don’t see the role to be any different from what a smart tech CEO of the future should do (of course, supported by the right lower management team). However, for the next decade having a centralized function with the task of using AI (50% of the time) (50% of the time) it sounds extremely appealing to me. even though only temporarily to support the business lines and foster innovation internally In spite of all the predictions I can make, the reality is that the relevance of a CAIO will be determined by how we will end up approaching AI, i.e., whether it will be eventually considered a mere instrument or rather a proper business unit ( AI-as-a-tool) ( AI-as-a-function) . III. The Chief Robotics Officer (CRO) Image Credit: Jackie Niam/Shutterstock We moved from the CDO role, which has been around for a few years now, to the CAIO one, which is close to being embedded in organizational charts. But the Chief Robotics Officer is a completely different story. Even if someone is speaking about the importance of it (check out this if you like), it is really not clear what his tasks would be and what kind of benefits would bring to a company, and envisaging this role requires a huge leap of imagination and optimism about the future of work (and business). report In few words, what a CRO will be supposed to take care of is . To use Gartner’s words, ‘ ’. He will be responsible of the overall automatization of workflows and to integrate them smoothly into the normal design process and daily activities. managing the automated workforce of the company he will oversee the blending of human and robotic workers I am not sure I get the importance of this holistic approach to enterprise automation, although I recognize the relevance of having a central figure who will actively keep track and communicate to employees all the changes made in transforming a manual activity/process into an automated one. Another interesting point is who the CRO will report to, which is of course shaped by his real functions and goals. If robotics is deeply routed into the company and allows to create or access new markets, . If his goal is instead to automatize internal processes to achieve a higher efficiency, or to a strategic CxO (varying on industry and vertical). a CRO might directly report to the CEO he will likely report to the COO My hypothesis is that this is going to be a (and not a technical one, as you might infer from the name) which, as the CAIO, might have a positive impact in the short term ( ) but no reason to exist in the longer term. It is easier to think about it in physical product industries rather than digital products or services companies, but automation will likely happen in a faster way in the latter, so we will end up having a (to manage the supply chain workflow) as well as a (to manage instead the automation of processes and activities). strategic role especially in managing the costs of adopting early robotics technologies Chief of Physical Robotics Officer Chief of Digital Robotics Officer There is any other new emerging role you have seen in the space? If so, which is this new role and what functions/tasks does it entail? Curious to know more if something is happening below the media radars or if we need to think about something different! — — Follow me on Medium Look at my other articles on AI and Machine Learning: Unsupervised Investments (II): A Guide to AI Accelerators and Incubators A Brief History of AI Open Source in Artificial Intelligence
