Quantitative creativity and other ways to inspire analytic excellence

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Having known fellow SAS colleague, Jin-Whan Jung, for more than two decades and watched his interesting and successful analytic journey progress, I was especially pleased to get to interview him for this episode of Analytically Speaking. He is an exceptional statistician with practical experiences in academia and industry. He now leads the growing Advanced Analytics Lab at SAS.  

Jin-Whan Jung leads the Advanced Analytic Lab at SAS.Jin-Whan shares a great deal about his experience, but some of the most interesting bits (that he is allowed to discuss) are from his time as Vice President of Customer Relationship Management at Samsung Life Insurance in South Korea and from his current role, leading the Advanced Analytics Lab at SAS where he works with some amazingly creative and talented quantitative individuals. 

A few highlights from the interview:

• When sharing how he and his team wanted to improve customer Lifetime Value (often referred to as LTV), the response from some fellow Samsung employees, was “LTV — is that the name of new Samsung TV?”
• Translating business problems into analytic problems and then translating them back from analytic solutions to business solutions is important.  
• He used an analytic triangle analogy to highlight the importance of quantitative creativity.
• A book on the power of reporting had a major impact on how he communicates.
• The core value of analytics transcends the ever-changing buzzwords (data mining, big data, data science…).
• Inspirational leaders make ordinary people be extraordinary people.

Jin-Whan was also kind enough to do a version of the interview in Korean. Whichever version you watch, you will glean new insights and ideas you can use in your organization.