Creating big value from big data requires the right skills. This report looks at the data skills that leading companies look for, and the implications for policy and management.

Key Findings

• Companies across the economy are moving towards a world of bigger, messier, faster data.
• Creating value from that data requires talent with a new mix of skills – including analysis, coding, business sense and creativity.
• Four out of every five companies we interviewed say that they struggle to find talent with those skills.
• Policymakers, educators and industry need to consider how to address these skills shortages by upgrading workforce skills, improving the supply of data talent from education, and changing perceptions of data work as dull and boring.
• Managers need to find, team-up and organise their data talent. We identify a set of good practices being used by the companies we interviewed to do this.

Everyone knows that creating value from big data requires the right skills, but what does this mean in practice?

This report draws on 45 interviews with leading businesses to explore the skills implications of the data revolution, including the following questions:

• What are the data analysis skills needs of leading companies?
• What are the barriers to accessing top data talent in the UK?
• What good management practices can be adopted to build high-performing data teams?
• How do policy and education need to change to improve the supply of data talent

It is the first output of a collaboration between Nesta, Creative Skillset and The Royal Statistical Society aimed at creating robust, independent and actionable evidence about the skills implications of the data revolution for UK policymakers, educators and managers. We will be publishing a follow up report based on a larger survey of UK business, and information about the supply of data-savvy graduates from UK universities later on in the year.

Authors
Hasan Bakhshi, Juan Mateos-Garcia, Andrew Whitby