Purple People: The Essential Element of Business Intelligence
The term ‘purple people’ might sound alien and perplexing at first. But no, we aren’t discussing individuals who love the color purple or those who belong to a specific culture or tribe. Instead, we’re exploring a unique category of professionals who are bridging the gap in the business and technical realms. These are the individuals who blend the ‘red’ of technical expertise with the ‘blue’ of business acumen to create a ‘purple’ set of skills. Let me share a funny story that put me on the path to understanding this concept…
Before I googled them, I mentioned purple people to my sister,r seeking a potential explanation as to who they were, and my 8-year-old niece happened to be in the room. “Well, it’s pretty clear why they’re called purple people — they paint themselves purple!” she said. Even though I laughed a lot, her idea was the only logical clarification back then.
So, who are purple people?
They are a mix of red and blue people. Let’s imagine each of them possessing a specific set of skills. Whilst red people possess technical skills and blue people possess business skills — purple people possess an assemblage of both red and blue people’s skills.
Consider an instance where a technology firm was struggling to get its innovative product to market. The engineers (‘red people’) had developed an incredible piece of technology, but they lacked the understanding of market trends, customer pain points, and competitor analysis. On the other hand, the business team (‘blue people’) knew the market inside out but couldn’t fully grasp the technical implications of the product.
In this situation, a ‘purple person’ stepped in. With a solid grounding in both tech and business, they were able to translate the technical aspects of the product into compelling marketable features. They bridged the communication gap between the two teams, resulting in a highly successful product launch that catapulted the firm into a market leadership position.
Another example can be found in the realm of data analytics. Here, ‘purple people’ play an invaluable role in translating complex data-driven insights into strategic actions. They navigate the intricate world of data science, understanding algorithms, and data structures while also being able to identify business opportunities and threats from these insights. As a result, they facilitate more data-driven decision-making processes, enhancing operational efficiency and profitability.
Such examples underscore the instrumental role of ‘purple people’ in solving complex problems by leveraging their unique blend of skills.
The best of them switch from one skill to another as fast as switching channels on the remote control. Most importantly, their significance is far more acknowledged. They are considered the missing piece of the business intelligence puzzle.
Why is that? Well, it’s mostly due to their strongest attribute — agility. They are usually leaders in a company since they know which red and blue people they should team up with in order to deliver value as fast as possible. Apart from this, they are also hiring new talents, those who don’t belong in the red or blue team either, but the purple one — and they end up working in positions such as product managers, analysts, and authorities or experts in fields such as engineering, science, etc. They are analytics translators — functioning as a bridge between technical know-how (data scientists and data engineers) and operational proficiency (marketing teams, mass production, supply chain management, etc.). Also, we must not forget to mention that red and blue people usually lack trust in each other and disrespect each other very often, mainly due to the lack of comprehension of each other’s job positions and the responsibilities they have in terms of obstacles, challenges, pressures, and deadlines. Purple people have to find a way to avoid these dissimilarities since they can come across as degrading for executing project assignments for all team members.
Business intelligence depends on purple people because they are crucial to providing information that is continuously answering business questions. This means that purple people are in charge of rigorously examining and understanding a large scale of business issues, strategies, tactics, etc., and this is a never-ending process since business questions are molded according to the broader market circumstances. Since the market requires fast adaptability and fast solutions, it is necessary to find people who feel comfortable with juggling different business and technology skills to address these questions and act immediately. That’s why it’s said that purple people are delivering the “real value.”
One major answer to the questions mentioned above is cognitive technologies. These technologies are the future of the world we live in, and purple people are the heart and mind of grasping them and implementing them into the market. That’s why entrepreneurs and executive-level managers give them so much worth — where they stop being recognized as purple but come across as special.
So, how do you spot a purple person within your company? After everything we’ve learned so far, it’s pretty easy — look for the ones who are obtaining business interest through the constant construction of tight relations between business and technology departments and who serve as the translator between both of these environments. If that’s you, well, I am happy to be the one who helped you realize you speak purple. Congratulations!
Tatjana Lukic, Project Assistant at Bridgewater Labs
