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Extract from MIT Sloan Management Review (Joseph Byrum) and featured in MIT Sloan Management Review’s AI & Machine Learning Imperative
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning offer new ways to boost productivity, develop talent, and drive organizational change by enhancing managers’ ability to make the right calls in complex situations.
Augmented intelligence tools have already made an impact for many companies, but the next revolution will happen when every aspect of a business, from top to bottom, is designed with AI in mind. Call this new construct the intelligent enterprise. Like other major revolutions in management, it’s poised to transform industries and organizations for decades to come. To prepare for this next phase, leaders will need to harness machine intelligence for decision-making across the business, assemble the right talent, and recognize the benefits and limitations of AI to shape organizational strategy.
Understanding the AI Advantage
It’s not hard to find examples of the amazing things we can do with artificial intelligence. AI and analytics have changed the centuries-old techniques of plant breeding, helped advance cutting-edge research into disease, and even been used to decipher damaged ancient Greek tablets.
What these achievements have in common is that they are discrete, structured tasks. In each example, algorithms are used to absorb available data, recognize patterns therein, simulate outcomes, and select moves or produce results based on the statistical likelihood of success. In plant breeding, for example, the simple step of designing a trial to see whether your breeding effort has succeeded or failed requires choosing from a set of 1.16 x 1012 possible combinations. Yet, increasing efficiency in this highly complex process through data analytics can save millions of dollars.1
If improving one aspect of one process through data analytics can have a massive payoff, imagine what can happen when an organization takes advantage of AI’s ability to learn, analyze, and optimize across all processes and business functions.
How AI Can Accelerate Leadership
Businesses, particularly large corporations with a global footprint, are complex adaptive systems. No one person, or even one group of managers, can know what’s going on at all levels of an organization consisting of thousands of employees. Even so, the CEO is responsible for keeping the board and shareholders happy, positioning the company for the future, maintaining employee morale, and developing an advantage over the competition — all while turning a profit.
Joseph Byrum is an accomplished executive leader, innovator, and cross-domain strategist with a proven track record of success across multiple industries. With a diverse background spanning biotech, finance, and data science, he has earned over 50 patents that have collectively generated more than $1 billion in revenue. Dr. Byrum’s groundbreaking contributions have been recognized with prestigious honors, including the INFORMS Franz Edelman Prize and the ANA Genius Award. His vision of the “intelligent enterprise” blends his scientific expertise with business acumen to help Fortune 500 companies transform their operations through his signature approach: “Unlearn, Transform, Reinvent.” Dr. Byrum earned a PhD in genetics from Iowa State University and an MBA from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.
