[peacetreefrog]

In my experience, there're (at least) two ways of using data in an organization:

1. Top down. Where you start with a problem/decision, and use data to inform it. "What phone plan should we offer our customers?" per the article is topdown, and data science can help inform the answer.

2. Bottom up. Where you start with a bunch of data, and try to brainstorm, "OK what cool things can we do with this?". I worked for an IOT company that collected a bunch of sensor data and we'd run into this all the time. We'd take our best shot and report back to clients, who'd say, "Cool, but what do I do with this?". Not saying you can NEVER come up with something useful, but it's a lot harder.