"Data science", as originally conceived, is something that requires an existing base of engineering infrastructure and scale (and decision-making culture) that'

"Data science", as originally conceived, is something that requires an existing base of engineering infrastructure and scale (and decision-making culture) that's typically only found in a capital-T Tech Company. But 5 years of HBR think pieces and McKinsey studies later, execs all over think they can just hire a bunch of statisticians, put them on their own team far from engineers, and get intelligent software systems out of it. They, in turn, realize their predicament and set out building their own such infrastructure to the best of their abilities. Sometimes they do okay and squeeze out real value, but they're never going to produce the cutting edge ai and prescriptive analytics that execs think they will.