Richard Dale

The Author

Richard Dale

Richard Dale is COO at Optum Labs, a research and innovation center leveraging big data to find insights to improve patient care and patient outcomes.

Big data (very) geek humor

Hat tip to Paul Bleicher, love this very geeky take – from 2009 – but just as relevant to today. (Cartoon by John Muellerleile.)

Richard Dale 11/15/2012

There is a verse in the Bible which includes the exhortation “I call heaven and earth as witness today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life!” I have always loved that verse because of the very active emphasis on the word...

Richard Dale 09/07/2013

Should an Angel Investor also get Advisory/Board Equity?

It’s demo day time of year in New England. Last month was the big MassChallenge finale. Last week was demo day for BetaSpring in Providence, RI, as well as for HealthBox Boston. This week it’s Techstars Boston Demo Day. One thing most of the presenting companies have in...

Richard Dale 11/13/2012

Seven years of cycling

Seven years ago yesterday, on July 3rd, 2006, I bought my new bike and started cycling (and blogging). It doesn’t seem “just like yesterday”… it really does feel like a few years since I first bought my bike. So far, according to my Garmin GPS I have ridden almost exactly...

Richard Dale 07/04/2013

Characteristics of Big Data

Doug Laney is the original creator of the 3V’s definition of Big Data – referring to volume, velocity or variety of data that is hard to handle with traditional data management tools and techniques. In August last year I proposed a better definition of Big Data as Data...

Richard Dale 05/26/2013

Startups: Dilemmas and Charters

New startups are sometimes formed by teams that have known and worked with each other before, and some are formed by teams that just met each other at a founder dating website or event, and decide to work together after just a few weeks. In either case, getting the team off...

Richard Dale 11/02/2012

Bonuses at Startups

Eric Paley of Founder Collective wrote a great blog post earlier this month: "Bonuses are toxic at startups” (which was later republished on CNN Money). In my years working in VC (the first time I have used this phrase), I found myself in complex situations about bonuses...

Richard Dale 05/11/2013

Back from the Dark Side

As many of my friends know, I recently joined the team at Optum Labs as Chief Operating Officer, located in Cambridge MA, working for the newly appointed CEO, Dr. Paul Bleicher. Also as many of you know, I was fortunate enough to be a co-founder with Paul at Phase Forward....

Richard Dale 04/30/2013

Freudian slip? HP Moonshot: meh

In an article on the website of Tools Journal, about the HP Moonshot line of servers, a typo has the name of the HP CEO written as Meh Whitman (meh defined here). I am jaded about HP, but am I that jaded? Here is the screen shot in case they fix it (they will!).

Richard Dale 04/19/2013

Spring has sprung

It is spring, just about, in New England. There are daffodils blooming in our yard, and I have been riding each Sunday since the beginning of April. The last few weeks have seen some major professional changes (more on that in a future post), and I have found riding on...

Richard Dale 04/15/2013

Big Data and the Internet of Things

I recently wrote about the amazing amount of data being produced by people on the internet or mobile web. For example, every minute, YouTube gets 48 hours of video uploads, and nearly a quarter of a billion emails are sent… yes that’s what people do every minute. However,...

Richard Dale 02/24/2013

Presenting to Win

“Whether you are presenting to investors or to startup competition judges, you are faced with some amount of random behavior.” A while ago I wrote a piece on “How to Score an Investment for your Startup”. Following that theme you can now read “Presenting to Win”, my...

Richard Dale 02/21/2013

Lots of data, all the time

This infographic is already, no doubt, out of date. It is from last June, but was probably out of date in July! People ask where big data comes from. This is a partial answer – as this is “just” data generated on the web and related web-facing activity. However, it starts to...

Richard Dale 02/17/2013

Big data doesn’t mean right answers

My friend Judah Levine sent me a link to this great article in InfoWorld “Big data's pitfall: Answers that are clear, compelling, and wrong”. This reminded me of an article which I really enjoyed from The Atlantic “The Data Vigilante” which is about small data as much as big...

Richard Dale 02/12/2013

Consumerisation of Health Care

I recently featured in a corporate video about the consumerisation of health care. I appear in the last minute or so (only a two minute video).Click here to see it.I think it provides an interesting flavor of some of the thought leadership at Optum (I work for OptumLabs, and...

Richard Dale 08/25/2016

15 minutes of fame … in Denmark

A few months ago I was invited to be interviewed about big data by Anders Høeg Nissen of the Danish Broadcasting Corp when he was visiting Boston. Anders is the presenter of Harddisken, a weekly hour-long program about technology, which first started broadcasting in 1994....

Richard Dale 01/25/2013

Looking at UK and US Healthcare Systems

Here is a guest post I wrote for Healthblawg's 10th anniversary (with thanks to David Harlow for inviting me to contribute): US and UK Health Systems - Not So Different?

Richard Dale 06/26/2016

Will your startup be around for the long term?

Who wants to know whether your startup will be around for the long term? Everyone. “Investors want to invest in a company that will be around long enough to have a chance of making money. Customers don’t want to spend time and effort bringing on a new product or service...

Richard Dale 01/15/2013

Happy 2015

Happy 2015… and here are some new year short pieces for you to look at.Julie Zhuo, who I don’t know, has a blog I just found but already love … here are two great posts that really speak to me, especially having spent so much time in startups and now at a big company:...

Richard Dale 01/11/2015

Your business in the Gartner Hype Cycle

I was recently asked to contribute to a series of articles for the Scalable Startups project at UC Berkeley. The first of my articles is now up and available for reading. “Most new businesses that are based on new technology of any kind are at the mercy of the Hype Cycle...

Richard Dale 12/18/2012

Richard Dale

The Author

Richard Dale

ENTER TO WIN!

Thank you