Investment in big data continues to increase, but it all means squat if there’s no talent to program the tools, analyze the results, and create business value. Universities are responding by creating programs to train a generation of data scientists in technical and business capabilities. The checklist of desirable attributes in a data scientist include a creative and well spoken systems architect, quantitative analyst, software engineer, and business analyst that’s practiced in data integration and data visualization. So it’s no wonder the data scientist is the unicorn of the industry. It also explaining why firms have found it almost impossible to hire one, and apparently just as difficult to keep one from being poached.