Success in Big Data is directly linked to the teamwork and willingness to share data in a company. At least, this is the lesson for companies, according to EMC’s Bill Schmarzo and Aiden O’Brien. At BigDataNYC 2015, Schmarzo, CTO of EMC, and O’Brien, senior director of EMC, talked with with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team.

Thinking like a data scientist

Schmarzo teaches at the University of San Francisco’s School of Management, and what his classes have taught him is that organizations are trying to hire data scientists, but not teaching people to think like data scientists. This is a shortsighted approach to Schmarzo.

When Big Data first began to happen, added O’Brien, everyone thought that Big Data was for data scientists. Now, though, “we’re recognizing that Big Data is a team sport,” he said. Everyone needs to be involved — from the top to the bottom of a company.

Success = shared data

“When we get involved with customers, we know almost immediately where that customer’s going to be successful in Big Data,” said Schmarzo. “And it’s the shared data.”

A company needs to know as much data about their customers as they can across the board, and “if a company doesn’t share data, they’re going to be outwitted,” Schmarzo said.

The idea of a data lake is important for the culture of a company, according to Schmarzo. The ability for an organization to bring all the data into one pool really forces an organization to confront those cultural issues of  sharing data to help cultivate further opportunities for the company.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of BigDataNYC 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE