Karim Lakhani

“AI is the ‘runtime’ that is going to shape all of what we do.” – Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO.

In industry after industry, data, analytics, and AI-driven processes are transforming the nature of organizations. While we often still treat AI as the domain of a specific skill, business function, or sector, we have entered a new era in which AI is challenging the very concept of how a company is put together. AI-centric organizations exhibit a new operating architecture, redefining how they create, capture, share, and deliver value. In this presentation, Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani will discuss how reinventing the firm around data, analytics, and AI removes traditional constraints on scale, scope, and learning that have hindered business growth for hundreds of years. From Airbnb to Ant Financial, Microsoft to Amazon, research shows how AI-driven processes are vastly more scalable than traditional processes, enabling companies to straddle industry boundaries while uncovering powerful opportunities for learning—to drive ever more accurate, complex, and sophisticated predictions. Professor Lakhani explains why it is important for firms to transition to an AI-centric model to thrive in the new economy and highlights how it can be done.

The COVID-19 crisis was an apt illustration of what happens when AI-driven systems experiencing exponential growth collide with traditional systems that cannot move as quickly. In this presentation, Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani will explain how such collisions occur and how to avert them with life-saving strategies that involve a clear recognition of the threat, immediate response, and thoughtful planning for long-term transformation. He also outlines how important it is for companies – especially those in health care, retail, transportation, manufacturing, consumer goods, telecommunications, and finance – to transition to an AI-centric model to ensure long-term growth and explains how they can make the transition so they are well positioned to thrive during and beyond the pandemic.

The AI Factory is becoming the operational core of most AI-first companies. The AI Factory runs millions of daily ad auctions at Google and Baidu. Its algorithms decide which cars offer rides on Didi, Grab, Lyft, and Uber. It sets the prices of headphones and polo shirts on Amazon and runs the robots that clean floors in some Walmart locations. It enables customer service bots at Fidelity and interprets X-rays at Zebra Medical. In each case, the AI factory treats decision-making as a science. Analytics systematically convert internal and external data into predictions, insight,s and choices, which in turn guide and automate operational workflows. In this session, Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani will outline the four components that are essential to all AI Factories and show companies how to start building their own so their business can thrive well into the future.

AI-driven digital operating models have been shown to exponentially increase the scale of customer reach and interaction, expand the scope of a company’s activities, and turbo-charge learning and innovation. At the same time, however, AI systems, if not properly designed, monitored, and governed have the potential to raise significant ethical issues that can threaten customer experiences, raise alarm bells with regulators, potentially damage corporate reputations, and test the limits of traditional business ethics frameworks and guidelines. In sum, just as AI can enable millions of users to benefit from a company’s products and services, a downside can occur when bias is perpetuated at scale to millions of users. Leaders in modern organizations cannot ignore these challenges, outsource them to the legal group, or blame the data science team for the lapses. In this session, Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani outlines the five main ethical challenges posed to business and technology leaders and the potential source of these challenges. He identifies the hidden ways these issues can creep into their processes and products and teaches participants how they can implement digital ethics from the ground up. In the process, he outlines the lessons that can be learned from leading organizations that have dealt with these challenges.

Innovation has become an urgent imperative for established and entrepreneurial organizations. Yet, beyond the buzzwords, most companies struggle with their own innovation efforts. Today, in industries as diverse as fashion design, media, software, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, and automotive, the most cutting-edge organizations have started to turbo-charge their product development and customer experiences by embracing open innovation, co-developing with communities, and sponsoring contests.

Based on over 20 years of research and hands-on experience in running open innovation programs for NASA, Harvard Medical School, The Broad Institute and many private organizations, Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani teaches participants best practices and frameworks for creating open innovation communities, contests and marketplaces. Participants will learn about incentives, structures, and processes needed to harness crowds both inside and outside of their enterprises, as well as the benefits and pitfalls of executing open innovation programs.