May 21, 2020
Robert Fink is on the leadership team at Palantir, where he has helped shape their approach to product design and architecture. He has also played major roles in ensuring the company stays focused on the mission needs of customers today, and, through shaping R&D, is helping ensure the company is better able to serve the needs of future customers and future missions.
In his time at Palantir Robert has participated in several responses to crisis situations where data solutions were needed quickly in order to save lives and limit loss of property. He captured many lessons learned from past responses to crisis situations in a recent Medium post titled: In crisis response, answer the simple questions first. The lessons learned from this post is very relevant to the situation many decision-makers are wrestling with right now so we sought out time with Robert to join us on the OODAcast.
Topics we reviewed with Robert include:
- Doing business in a global corporation where most of the team are operating out of their homes
- Lessons learned from crisis response including disaster relief work globally
- Lessons learned from support to public health
- Use cases for data integration and analysis in public health, including long-term research and informing operational decisions
- Privacy in a crisis
- Speed of delivery of solutions in a crisis (how can solutions be fielded faster?)
- What is data governance and what parts are still applicable in a crisis?
- What is meant by focusing on "simple questions first"
Related Resources:
- In Crisis Response, Ask Simple Questions First: The article that inspired this discussion
- The Executive’s Guide to Quantum Computing: What business decision-makers need to know now about quantum superiority
- Context on Make vs Buy in the Federal Ecosystem: If you know of anyone anywhere in government who is thinking of building/coding a new data system to track issues around the pandemic they should just stop and should buy a commercial platform.
- OODAcast on YouTube: OODA’s YouTube Channel