We’re kicking off the summer with a big piece of news.

Harvard Business School has invited Enolytics to be featured in a case study, which will be used in their business analytics course for MBA students.

This opportunity has been an extraordinary experience, particularly as we work with colleagues and partners who, since the launch of the business, have been critical to the evolution of our work.

The case study method is at the heart of HBS’ teaching methodology. Simply put, the method is a discussion of real-life situations that business executives have faced.

When teaching this way, professors present the narrative of a business along with a challenge involving an innovative product or service in a real-world environment.

In the case study about Enolytics, the authors have chosen to focus on the language of tasting notes and the methodology (called Natural Language Processing, or NLP) that we used for clients. The idea is to analyze the tasting notes of a category of wines in order to discern what differentiates one wine from another in the eyes, and the language, of reviewers.

Needless to say, we’re thrilled about this development with HBS.

The irony is that NLP is just one of the tools in our data analysis toolkit, along with things like predictive analysis, the price elasticity model, and weeding out “bad” data.

But it’s NLP that’s caught the HBS authors’ eye.

Their students won’t all go on to work in wine, of course. But, in their future as business executives, they will need a firm grasp of how to use data as well as a vision for its potential applications.

That is, we think, the biggest takeaway of all from this process: how important it is to be familiar with data, and to understand what’s possible with it in order to help the business thrive.

Being in that comfort zone is the differentiator moving forward.

Nothing would make us happier than to welcome you there, too.

Thank you, as always, for reading, and for your support and encouragement as we all continue to grow and evolve.

Cathy