Sep 23–26, 2019

Farrah Bostic
Founder, The Difference Engine

Farrah Bostic is the founder of the Difference Engine, which she created based on her belief that deep understanding of customer needs is essential to growing businesses through great products and services. Farrah has honed her customer-centric insights as an advisor to some of the world’s most respected brands, including Apple, Microsoft, Disney, Samsung, and UPS. Previously, she began her career as a creative and then went on to be a strategist at leading agencies, including Wieden+Kennedy, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Mad Dogs & Englishmen, and Digitas, where she was group planning director and mobile strategy lead; she also ran innovation as a partner at Hall & Partners and developed digital tools for online qualitative research as SVP of consumer immersion at OTX.

Sessions

2:55pm–3:35pm Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Location: 1E 10/11

Executive Briefing: Understanding the cult of prediction

Executive Briefing and best practices, Strata Business Summit

Secondary topics: Ethics

Farrah Bostic (The Difference Engine)

We're living in a culture obsessed with predictions. In politics and business, we collect data in service of the obsession. But our need for certainty and control leads some organizations to be duped by unproven technology or pseudoscience—often with unforeseen societal consequences. Farrah Bostic looks at historical—and sometimes funny—examples of sacrificing understanding for "data." Read more.