Better business through Big Data is a top area of interest in technology, with those on both sides of the aisle asking the same question: Do we make business people data scientists, or do we make data scientists business people?

Bill Schmarzo, chief technology officer of EMC’s Global Services Big Data Practice, has written a book called Big Data MBA in which he attempts to answer this  question. “We can’t expect to go out and find data scientists who understand the business as well as the business people. Those unicorns are not out there,” he told John Walls and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team. “So how do we get the business people to start thinking more like the data scientist?”

Schmarzo said people first need to get over the idea that data science is a super complicated, esoteric field of study that only geniuses can do. All it is, he said, is, “Identifying those variables and metrics that might be better predictors of performance.” Once we get business people to realize that, they can start thinking of data science as just another business discipline they have to learn.

A lucrative marriage

Schmarzo said that the best outcomes will result from business people thinking about what questions need to be asked and then getting the data scientists, with their unique expertise, to ferret out the answers.

The trick is in getting business people to learn just enough about data science to ask the right questions so “they’re moving from an environment where I’m asking questions about what happened historically to start asking questions about what’s going to happen in the future.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of EMC World 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE