This is exactly right. I'm a member of INFORMS (the operations research professional society), and I can report that a staggering amount of ink has been spilled over the last few years about how to capitalize on the recent "Analytics" and "Big Data" trends.
On the one hand, people are starting to realize that quantitative analysis can help their businesses (mind blowing, right?) -- on the other hand, so much of what you see about "analytics" and "big data" is nonsensical jargon. You have two camps within the OR world: people who want to ride this bandwagon all the way to the bank, and people who want to refocus on getting the message out about what OR really is.
The bandwagon-riders have succeeded to some extent. INFORMS created a monthly "Analytics" magazine[1], created an Analytics Certification[2] (their first professional certification), and so on.
The other camp has a legitimate concern that OR already has an "identity crisis" (operations research vs. management science vs. systems engineering vs. industrial engineering vs. applied math vs. applied statistics etc etc). INFORMS has spent millions trying to get business people to just be aware that it exists. The fear is that hitching our wagon to these trends will just be another blow to our profile when these fad words are replaced by the next big thing.
[1] http://analytics-magazine.org/ (you can get a good feel for the type of content in this publication just by reading the article titles...)
On the one hand, people are starting to realize that quantitative analysis can help their businesses (mind blowing, right?) -- on the other hand, so much of what you see about "analytics" and "big data" is nonsensical jargon. You have two camps within the OR world: people who want to ride this bandwagon all the way to the bank, and people who want to refocus on getting the message out about what OR really is.
The bandwagon-riders have succeeded to some extent. INFORMS created a monthly "Analytics" magazine[1], created an Analytics Certification[2] (their first professional certification), and so on.
The other camp has a legitimate concern that OR already has an "identity crisis" (operations research vs. management science vs. systems engineering vs. industrial engineering vs. applied math vs. applied statistics etc etc). INFORMS has spent millions trying to get business people to just be aware that it exists. The fear is that hitching our wagon to these trends will just be another blow to our profile when these fad words are replaced by the next big thing.
[1] http://analytics-magazine.org/ (you can get a good feel for the type of content in this publication just by reading the article titles...)
[2] https://www.informs.org/Build-Your-Career/Analytics-Certific...