Description

For years, HBS professors Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani researched (and helped) numerous organizations—from stalwarts like Microsoft and Amazon to upstarts like Airbnb and Peloton— how to understand and realize the power of digital transformation and AI. The two recently authored Competing in the Age of AI (January 2020, Harvard Business Review Press), a best-selling book on how to realize the business impact of AI.

“Artificial Intelligence is changing the landscape of business and the nature of companies,” says Lakhani, co-founder and co-director of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard and Harvard Business Analytics Program. “It’s not just about platforms or digital transformation, but about a wholesale change in how you define and build or rebuild a company.”

“Some of the world’s most valuable companies have put AI at the center of their operating models,” says Iansiti, the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS) and co-director of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard and the HBS Digital Initiative. “This allows them to break from the constraints of traditional business models to massively increase scope, straddle industry boundaries, and drive more accurate, complex and sophisticated predictions.”

One of the most interesting examples, illustrating the ideas in Competing in the Age of AI, Moderna structured itself as a digital native platform to quickly move from identifying, isolating and fully sequencing the COVID-19 virus to designing and delivering a vaccine candidate within 41 days, in January and February, 2020. At the other end of the spectrum, 215 year old Massachusetts General Hospital worked hard to rapidly integrate and architect digital capabilities to manage the capacity surge brought about by the COVID pandemic.

Prof. Iansiti will join the HBS Club of NY to discuss the takeaways from his book, as well as share anecdotes from the Moderna and Mass General episodes.

Join us for this insightful, exciting and timely conversation.

Participants must register by April 12th to receive details on joining the discussion.

Please note that no refunds will be issued.