BW's "Big Data" MBA Track: Taming Information Overload

As "big data" continues to make headlines, BW's new MBA in business analytics is highlighted as a solution in this month's Cleveland Business Connects (CBC) magazine. The article highlights the dilemma of "information overload" or what's described as "infobesity." The challenge for business and managers is to tame data that has grown so large and complex that traditional ways businesses process data have become inadequate.



“You have all of these inputs and sources of data coming into an organization, and organizations are struggling to make sense of it all,” John Lanigan, Dean of the BW School of Business, told CBC. “In some cases it’s very specific information, right down to the product level. And in other cases it’s customer experience information. Some of it is very formalized. Some of it’s informal. It could be a Facebook post — ‘I love your product’ or ‘I hate your product.’ How do you make sense of all that information? How do you organize it? How do you gather it? How do you analyze it?”

Lanigan also told the magazine that a variety of MBA students will benefit from the data analysis track. "I don't think you could pigeonhole one type of student that might be interested in this," said Lanigan. "It's not industry specific. It's not job description specific. That's what's kind of fun about it."

It has been predicted by U.S. News that in three years there will be a shortage of roughly 190,000 people with the skills to analyze and manage big data. BW's data analysis MBA track is available starting Fall of 2015.