Creative disruption in digital transformation depends on digital skills. There is significant benefit from implementing technology, for example in how data is organized, accessed and shared, or specific tools for specific workflows. However, these advances, while accelerating workflows, do not fundamentally change anything in the organization or how it runs. The effects are local.
Enthought encourages people to think differently, operate differently, and think more broadly about what is possible to truly deliver transformative business results.
Enthought was founded in 2001 when CEO Eric Jones was doing postdoctoral research in electrical engineering at Duke University using the Python scientific software stack.
He recognized its potential to solve tough science problems and remove drudgery from the work of technical people. Eric began developing it and networking to enlist like-minded experts to join him.
To accelerate the application of Python, in 2002 Eric initiated the first SciPy (Scientific Python) conference at CalTech, joined by about 35 like-minded scientists.
This led Enthought to consulting engagements, training, and almost 20 years later, a toolkit of specialized software and infrastructure technology to collaborate with clients to transform their business. And SciPy? Now an annual event of over 800 in Austin.
Digital Transformation Defined | Enthought
Mike Connell, VP Organizational Transformation provides a definition of digital transformation for businesses where science is critical to success. Building on this, Mike sets out the work necessary to transform an organization. True digital transformation delivers orders of magnitude performance improvements, creating new possibilities and removing significant drudgery from the work of scientists and engineers.
Laboratories can offer significant improvements in efficiency and results through digital transformation. These improvements are only realized through an integrated approach that addresses all elements of digital maturity.
Driving a Digital Future
The Digital Transformation Technical Leaders Program is a multi-year effort designed to develop scientists and engineers into digital scientists and engineers who will become the technical leaders of tomorrow. Through a combination of training and apprenticeship, real problems from the workplace are taken on. The real-time application of techniques ensures that relevant knowledge is gained throughout the program.
The program empowers scientists and engineers to use complex digital tools to solve tough technical problems, often creating entirely new workflows that can transform the way they work and accelerate scientific innovation.
The program begins with a unique, multi-week Immersion Training course. This is an intensive, apprenticeship-like program designed to provide scientists and engineers with a foundation of core digital skills founded on the Python coding language. The reality is that working on real projects is the fastest way to acquire knowledge.
Enthought encourages attendees to come to the program with their own technical problems, which are collaboratively solved. Program participants often work on projects that are a source of drudgery in their work, where AI/machine learning techniques can turn days and weeks’ worth of work into minutes and hours.
Digital Maturity
Enthought breaks digital maturity into five categories. Inexperience, allows management to develop a strategy and plan for the investment to ‘facilitate and accelerate transformation, in parallel with delivering early business results. These categories also allow individuals and functions across the organization to understand where they fit, and what needs to be done.
The Way Ahead
Enthought is a team of scientists and engineers passionate about solving problems and removing drudgery from the clients’ work through advanced computing techniques and innovative workflows.
Quite fluent in the language of science, 90% of the team hold advanced degrees, and 65% hold PhDs. A number of Enthought scientists have made major contributions to scientific computing as well.
The firm collaborates with clients to define opportunities, develop scientific software, craft enabling infrastructure, and train their experts in apprenticeship-style programs to develop new techniques and workflows, fundamentally changing how clients work.
It has transformed the processes of laboratories to deliver orders of magnitude performance improvements.
“We help our clients see, then realize the possibilities for order of magnitude improvements through modeling, automation and simulation. Foundational to this is increasing the digital maturity of the organization, through data and infrastructure, digital tools, expert skills, and management engagement,” says the company.
Enthought sees unlimited potential for business impact through advanced scientific computing techniques and the innovative workflows they enable, created by a new generation of digital scientists.
This is true digital transformation; a process of facilitating and accelerating the journey of an organization as it increases its digital maturity, through its data and infrastructure, digital tools, expert skills, with committed management.
The Thought Leadership | Eric Jones, CEO
Eric holds both a Ph.D. and M.S. in electrical engineering from Duke University and a B.S.E. in mechanical engineering from Baylor University. Widely known as one of the founding fathers of Python’s scientific community, Eric drives business growth through digital transformation.
For more than 15 years, he has been an innovator in applying machine learning, image processing, 3D visualization, and parallel computing to elegantly solve the most complex business problems.
Prior to founding Enthought in 2001, Eric focused on numerical electromagnetics and genetic optimization in the department of electrical engineering at Duke University.
“For companies where science is critical to business success, Enthought combines software development skills, client domain understanding, and change management expertise to collaboratively deliver transformative results.”