[netcan]

What's the potential path forward (say projecting 10 years ahead) from the current growth in demand for data mining centric people?

I mean people go and study in response to demand. They learn data mining and AI at Universities. I think it's often people with backgrounds or aptitude in maths. What will the 22 year old with an aptitude for maths that is learning R, SQL, AI-for-business and such be doing in 10 years?

I don't know if the starting point matters much. "Results Driven," even if its optimising inventory or making ad purchasing decisions or data mining old DBs is not a bad place to "search" for advancements. Not everything needs to be fundamental research.

[nkassis]

I doubt the 22 year old you are referring too will run out of problems to solve. I also feel at some point it will be like a lot of software engineering is today. Working for companies implementing solutions similar to what already exists but tailored to the context of that companies specific needs. As of now I feel that this field is so young that a lot of the solutions are almost completely custom built to the problem at hand and that a lot of work is needed to abstract away those solutions into higher level reusable pieces.