S5 E3: What Makes A World Class Innovation Lab? Experian DataLabs and Eric Haller

I am excited to share with you my conversation with Eric Haller as this is the first time I have had someone on the show that is in charge of a major innovation lab so our conversation will give you a window of visibility into several areas.

Major Take-Aways From This Episode:

• Why he believes that “Ruthless Competency Wins”.
• Innovation is more powerful when linked to a higher purpose.
• Managing an innovation portfolio and the development of the Intellectual property comes out of these efforts.
• The organizational structure he reports to.
• The culture of Experian from the types of people Eric hires as well as the culture of the Experian business as it supports the development efforts of the Innovation Lab.
• LDA – Machine Learning Techniques.
• Latent Dirichlet Allocation.
• Unsupervised and supervised Machine Learning.
  • Unsupervised is based on recognizing patterns.
  • Supervised – modelling known outcomes.

About Eric Haller

Eric Haller is the Executive Vice President of Experian DataLabs. Experian DataLabs is responsible for developing innovative products generated from break-through experimentation leveraging machine learning and data assets from a variety of sources.  He led the creation of labs in the US, UK & Brazil that support research & development initiatives across the Experian enterprise.  New products developed in the labs cover mobile, payments, consumer & commercial credit, fraud, targeted marketing & healthcare.   Prior to Experian, Eric was responsible for new products with Sequoia Capital backed Green Dot where he created and brought to market the first credit card a consumer could purchase off of a j-hook in a retailer.  Eric also co-founded identity fraud detection business iDawg which was later renamed ID Analytics.  ID Analytics was acquired by LifeLock which is now part of Symantec.  Other roles held by Eric includes Chief Marketing Officer of the first publicly traded machine learning company, HNC Software (acquired by FICO) and executive roles with Visa & MasterCard. 

Read full transcript here.

How to get in touch with Eric Haller:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Key Resources:

• Experian’s DataLabs Website
• About Experian’s DataLabs
• Article by Eric Haller for insideBIGDATA website How Breakthrough Innovations at Experian’s DataLabs Expand the Horizons of Doing Good Things with Data
• We Too Often Ignore the Tradeoff Between Innovation and Efficiency - Inc. Magazine
• How Experian is Turning Big Data Into Big Dollars – San Diego Union-Tribune

This episode is sponsored by the CIO Scoreboard, a powerful tool that helps you communicate the status of your IT Security program visually in just a few minutes.

Credits:
* Outro music provided by Ben’s Sound

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About Bill Murphy
Bill Murphy is a world renowned IT Security Expert dedicated to your success as an IT business leader. Follow Bill on LinkedIn and Twitter.