Vibe Analytics: Improvising with Data in the Age of AI
How executives unlock faster insights and better decisions with AI.
Introduction
For years, executives have relied on regression analyses, decision trees, and dashboards to guide strategy. These tools, built by data scientists, delivered answers to predefined questions. But they didn’t let leaders themselves ask questions of the data. They were static, backward-looking, and often divorced from the nuance executives needed in the moment.
That is what made them limiting.
Now a new approach is emerging: vibe analytics. Instead of waiting on reports, leaders can engage directly with data through AI. They can drop in a dataset, pose a question in natural language, and watch as the system generates interactive visualizations that evolve with each new inquiry. As Michael Schrage of MIT Sloan puts it:
“Vibe analytics is all about getting more value from data. In the past, we used regression analysis and decision trees. Now we need a different way of engaging with data.”
Executives who embrace vibe analytics are not just accelerating analysis. They are discovering insights faster, sparking creative decisions, and fueling organizational momentum with data-driven improvisation.
What Is Vibe Analytics?
Vibe analytics applies the improvisational spirit of “vibe coding” to the enterprise. Instead of coding scripts or requesting dashboards, executives interact with data conversationally. AI interprets the input, generates graphs, and refines them as new prompts are given.
The difference is profound. Dashboards deliver fixed views. Decision trees formalize predefined paths. Vibe analytics, by contrast, encourages exploration, optimizing not just for effect (quantifiable outcomes) but also for affect (the emphasis, the tone, the meaning we draw from results). Schrage likens it to music:
“It’s like the difference between going to Juilliard to play classical music and heading uptown to play jazz. Maybe it’s not enough to follow the score really well. You also want to be able to play and engage.”
That capacity to play, to improvise, is what enables vibe analytics to surface insights faster, reveal patterns sooner, and give executives confidence in the choices they make.
A Tool for Vibe Analytics
One of the clearest embodiments of this approach is Plotly Studio. Domenic Ravita, VP of Marketing at Plotly, recalls years of wrestling with funnel metrics, cohort data, and log files, tasks most executives know too well. They were slow, messy, and required constant support from data scientists.
“Executives shouldn’t have to wait on a dedicated analyst to make sense of their business,” Ravita says. “They should be able to explore data themselves, shape it, and see patterns come alive instantly.”
Plotly Studio was built with that goal in mind. Load a dataset such as financials, tickets, or security logs, and the tool automatically generates interactive visualizations. AI agents manage the grunt work of cleaning, aligning, and shaping the data. The leader’s role is to interpret, refine, and improvise.
“The data itself is the first prompt,” Ravita notes.
This philosophy builds on a decade of credibility. Plotly’s open-source Dash framework has been downloaded more than a billion times by data scientists worldwide. It became the backbone for interactive analytics across industries. Studio extends that heritage, bringing the rigor of Dash into an interface executives can use without coding.
Ravita frames it not as replacing analysts, but as empowering leaders.
“We’re not asking marketing executives or product managers to become engineers. We’re giving them a way to improvise, to vibe with their data, without losing trust or transparency.”
Where Executives Can Apply Vibe Analytics
The power of vibe analytics comes alive in high-stakes scenarios.
In clinical trials, researchers and executives must sift through reams of patient data to identify promising signals. Traditionally, this meant spreadsheets, dashboards, and long cycles of statistical analysis. With vibe analytics, leaders can drop trial data into the system and instantly see visualizations that reveal unexpected responses, cohort behaviors, and anomalies. The faster those insights surface, the faster decisions can be made and the sooner treatments can reach patients.
In mining operations, executives track equipment performance, safety data, and production efficiency. Vibe analytics uncovers patterns that static dashboards miss, such as how certain equipment behaviors correlate with downtime or where inefficiencies compromise worker safety. Those discoveries can improve output and reduce accidents, directly affecting the bottom line and workforce wellbeing.
Schrage offers another example from contact centers. Most organizations already track satisfaction metrics like NPS and first-call resolution. But vibe analytics allows leaders to interrogate transcripts directly: What are customers unhappiest about? When are agents more frustrated than the people calling in? Linking sentiment analysis with performance metrics opens new pathways to improve service and retention.
These are not just charts. They are narratives, executives engaging with their data, asking new questions, and seeing possibilities they had not imagined.
Responsible AI in Action
But as with any AI-powered capability, trust matters. Yoni Leitersdorf warns that vibe analytics, like vibe coding, risks generating misleading “insights” if taken uncritically.
Ravita is quick to agree. That is why Plotly Studio emphasizes transparency: every visualization is backed by specifications and verifiable logs. Corporate data stays within private boundaries, never exposed to public training sets. And because processes are open, leaders can “trust but verify,” balancing AI’s speed with human judgment.
The point is clear: vibe analytics does not replace leadership. It amplifies it.
Getting Started with Vibe Analytics
For executives, the best way to begin is small. Start with a dataset you know well, whether quarterly financials, funnel metrics, or customer tickets. Upload it. Let AI generate your first set of charts.
Then, experiment. Change prompts. Ask “what if.” Explore both effect and affect: not just what happened, but how do people feel about it? As Schrage puts it,
“Feel may be a four-letter word, but it’s a four-letter word that matters.”
The reward is not just faster answers, but better questions. Ravita calls this compression:
“What used to take hours or days now takes minutes. It gets you to the better questions faster.”
That is the essence of vibe analytics: improvisation fueled by data, made practical by AI.
The Future Is Improvisational
Executives have long relied on tools that gave them fixed answers. Vibe analytics gives them something different: the ability to improvise with their data, discovering patterns as they emerge and exploring possibilities in real time.
It is not dashboards. It is not decision trees. It is leadership, amplified by AI.
And like jazz, the beauty is in the improvisation.
Sources
Vibe Analytics: the new era of data analysis? Yoni Leitersdorf, May 07, 2025
Are You Ready for Vibe Analytics? MIT IDE, Michael Schrage of the MIT Sloan School, May 22, 2025
Vibe Analytics: Vibe Coding’s New Cousin Unlocks Insights, Michael Schrage, July 24, 2025