The New Data-driven World
Fawad Mahdi
Fawad holds a Masters in Big Data from The University of Sydney, an MBA from IBA Karachi and BSc in Economics from LUMS
The rise of data has grown exponentially. Organizations are no longer relying on intuitions to make strategic decisions, rather what is driving value to stakeholders are data-backed judgments. While this may seem a far off opportunity for business students at first, it represents one of the best avenues for such students to i) make a career or ii) become entrepreneurial.
I graduated from my MBA in 2011 and never studied programming, nor was I fond of it. I was presented with an opportunity to study for another master's degree at University of Sydney in 2017 and witnessed how business schools and their students are shifting paradigms into becoming skill oriented, trying to set themselves apart from the competition. Least to mention, data science and machine learning topped their preferences.
Having worked abroad and locally on multiple data science projects, I feel business students who can acquire data science skills, can potentially become some of the best resource in the market. Not because they become better at coding and deployment, but because they now start seeing value hidden in data that others simply ignore. They learn to question, start to visualize a bigger picture and most importantly, they communicate with C-level executives in a language that they can understand. And if you can demonstrate your ability to extract meaningful answers from mere numbers, that is where you make yourself differentiable and valuable. Ask yourself, do you want to work in a profession which would eventually die out in the next decade or so, or take the challenge to get those data science skills and become a pioneer. You do not need a university to gain such skills, do short courses and practice! I thus founded 'Data science Journey Pakistan' precisely to create such a talent of professionals in Pakistan.
To conclude, Pakistan is on a brink of a data revolution, not in terms of gathering it but making sense and adding business value to it. I am currently consulting a number of organizations in Pakistan in this domain and there is a dearth of talent. My advice to current students, especially those studying business courses to make yourself valuable and acquire some real skills that are valued in today's modern world.