Precisely: Working with Precision Systems in a World of Data

Bronze Medal Winner, 2024 Axiom Business Book Award, Emerging Trends / AI

If you want to win an election, improve the health of a city, or thrill your customers, you’re going to need precision systems--the highly engineered working arrangements of teams, processes, and technologies that put data and AI to work creating the change that leaders want, exactly how they want it. Big Tech firms like Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook have mastered their own precision systems, building trillion-dollar businesses using data-driven tools from mass-market ＂nudges＂ to industrial-grade recommendation systems.

Precisely is the playbook for the rest of us. Zachary Tumin and Madeleine Want show how leaders in every domain are taking real-time precision systems into the marketplace, the political race, and the fight for health--from New York-Presbyterian Hospital to the New York Times, the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens to BNSF Railroad, the Biden-Harris campaign to the NYPD--to reveal elusive patterns, perform a repetitive task, run a play, or tailor a message, one at a time or by the millions.

Precisely provides insight that will help leaders choose the system that’s right for them, decide which problem to tackle first, sell the importance of precision to stakeholders, power-up the people and the technology, and accomplish change that delivers precisely what’s needed every time--and do it all responsibly.

Zachary Tumin is a member of the faculty at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He has served in senior executive positions in public administration, industry, and academia, from Harvard Kennedy School to Wall Street’s Financial Services Technology Consortium to New York City government. With William Bratton, Tumin is coauthor of Collaborate or Perish! Reaching Across Boundaries in a Networked World (2012).

Madeleine Want is vice president of data at Fanatics Betting and Gaming. Her previous roles include product management for data at Audible and Axel Springer.

Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, the cofounder of the International Institute for Analytics, a fellow of the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy, and a senior advisor to Deloitte Analytics.