Fight Club actor Ed Norton is also a Data Entrepreneur!
Apply data to transform traditional business processes
If you haven’t watched the movie Fight Club as yet, I highly recommend it, in spite of its mixed reviews. Actor Edward (Ed) Norton is fantastic in it! And the film plot is decadently twisted.
Edward Norton’s filmography is deep and wide. In addition to being an award winning actor, he is also a director, producer and screenwriter.
And in addition to being an award winning actor, he is also an Ivy League graduate (Yale University), pilot, environmentalist, conservationist, philanthropist, investor (incl. an early investment in Uber), board member and data entrepreneur. (How does he find the time to achieve all these qualifications, one might ask!).
He has co-founded multiple technology and data-centric companies including-
Crowdrise, acquired by GoFundMe, a crowd funding platform for charities
EDO, a data science-based media company that applies machine learning to measure advertising efficacy on linear TV and streaming
Zeck, a cloud-software platform to better manage board meetings using AI
There’s something about Edward!
I got to know about Norton’s entrepreneurship a few years ago by accident. I worked for a global media and entertainment company at the time. I might have been researching television ratings and advertising measurement for one of my internal clients when I stumbled upon his company, EDO and its list of co-founders including Norton. Until then, I’d only known of his stellar acting career.
The find certainly made an impression. I am infinitely fascinated by people who don different professional capes and experiment with various career paths, often in parallel. I think it takes a certain je ne sais quoi!
Fast forward to present times, I decided to dig deeper into his data and tech initiatives. The more I listened to podcasts and read articles about him as an investor and founder, the more I realized that I must write about some of his insights on the business of data.
First, a caveat. I am presenting thoughts expressed by him through various media outlets, but as I interpreted and understood them. Were Norton to review them, I hope that he would agree with that interpretation. Where I have taken significant liberty with that interpretation in order to make my own point, I refer to that as the WDmB (this publication’s name) take.
Also, I have intentionally stayed away from any discussion related to his illustrious movie career to stay in my publication’s lane.
The following section is focused only on his takes on the application of data science and technology to address business concerns.
Why more companies ‘should’ upgrade their business processes using technology and data-driven approaches
Replace the “old toolset”
We now have the ability to upgrade many tedious or time consuming tasks. Paper contracts and trails have become digital. Hand-written letters have been replaced by email. Even medical procedures have changed their tools. It behooves companies to replace some of their outdated and inefficient processes and “change the plumbing” where the capability exists.
We can use data to develop better measurement and technology to automate different manual tasks. Doing so would save time and help people focus on decisions that actually move the needle on business performance.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help reduce inefficiencies in people-driven processes too such as board meeting governance (e.g. Zeck, a company he co-founded), legal, CRM, compliance and other functions.
WDmB take: It isn’t necessary for companies to overhaul existing systems all at once. They can start by taking small steps such as moving to data-science supported forecasting techniques to replace more projections-based methods. Or consolidating existing datasets and using business intelligence tools to draw deeper insights.
Faster processing power than humans
In this era, machine-learning or AI “is one of the biggest inflections in the capacity to understand the sheer volume of data in the world”. These methods make it easier and faster to process information than a human can. We can enhance domain or subject matter expertise by relying on these technologies to aid us in achieving our business goals.
Why more companies ‘don’t’ upgrade their business processes
“No one ever got fired for making a decision around the legacy accepted metric”
If advanced technologies exist, why are organizations not adopting them as quickly? Or why aren’t employees, particularly in big companies empowered to make a change?
Change requires rocking the boat and has the potential to destabilize an existing system. As the quote in the sub-heading suggests, sometimes employees do not promote novel or innovative approaches, even if they believe in the potential, in case it does not go perfectly as planned.
Companies should try to create cultures in which there is a sense of “opportunity and risk”. People should be unshackled to propose and try new approaches.
We need strong leadership to create change
It takes great leaders to create great change. The need for boldness and risk-taking is important especially in legacy industries which lag behind newer or smaller ones in their adoption of data-science and technology.
How to develop ‘quality’ data-driven solutions that actually solve the problem
The size of your dataset is not as important as the signals in the data.
WDmB take: Make sure you run descriptive statistics on your dataset to check for discrepancies but also initial signs of signals
Look for latent and behavioral signals in your data to draw actionable insights. According to Norton, surveys to collect data, for some use cases, might provide weak proxies for intent. Often they do not deliver a high correlation to actual action. True signals are found in granular behavior in which people don’t believe they are signaling an intent.
WMnB take: In-depth statistical analysis is required to draw out these underlying drivers of action.
“What gets made gets affected by the quality of the insights”.
WDmB take: Make sure that the results of your data analysis are robust because it affects the future of your product, e.g. what features or content get included in the next version. If lower quality insights lead you to include features that customers don’t appreciate, it results in sunk costs and poor reputation.
People are “cynical about test audiences” and the feedback they provide for your product. If you’ve been in the weeds of creating something, it is hard to zoom out. Putting your product in front of a test audience can give you objective opinions. Thus, test audiences are very important.
WDmB take: Also important is how you analyze the data submitted by test audiences. Pay attention to what the test audience explicitly tells you but also dig deeper into the data to identify “behavior in which people don’t believe they are signaling an intent” as mentioned in a previous point.
Always listen to your partners or clients to make sure that you are solving their problems with your data solutions. If they don’t help the client and address their problem, the solutions don’t matter.
WDmB take: As they say in the startup world “Make something people want”
Stories function powerfully if they are transparent and relatable.
WDmB take: This could apply to how you tell stories with data too. Connect your data storytelling with your audience. The audience should be able to see itself in your story. That makes the story relatable.
Leading a Life of Multiplicities
Before we conclude, I wanted to get back to a question I posed at the start of this article - how can one person produce and achieve as much as Norton has in entirely different fields?
Norton said the following in relation to musician David Bowie’s achievements but it could well apply to his own “it is possible to parallel process different components of your identity”. We each embody multiplicities that may or may not come to fruition for every person. But they still exist and can be tapped into if one is willing to explore.
And while you pursue your life’s necessities, interests and passions, he advises not to compare your scorecard to anyone else’s.