Abstract: 

The deployment of AI is truly transformational when it impacts the core business tasks and processes of the enterprise. For this reason, most organizations should only undertake AI initiatives with strategic impact potential. Experience shows that AI transformation programs achieve better results if organized in successive iterations of projects that implement high-value or even disruptive use cases. If managed properly, each project will create momentum and elements that will accumulate until critical mass is achieved. This iterative bottom-up approach is the most effective and realistic way of facing the daunting task of achieving the required AI proficiency within a reasonable time and cost.
Contrary to this approach, too many AI transformation programs start with the creation of a corporate unit which is given a list of open mission statements such as “gather all our data and exploit it”, “identify and prioritize all the AI opportunities company-wide”, or “build the capabilities required to transform the business with AI”. The corporate AI unit is quickly flooded with too many requests and ideas and its efforts become diluted and immersed into power-fights. This also leads to AI tourism, since initiatives are launched to learn and experiment but have no continuity. It is very unlikely that this top-down approach achieves an acceptable fraction of the intended transformational goals even if provided with enough time and resources.
This talk will discuss in detail why a task-force, bottom-up approach is the only suitable initial AI deployment option for most enterprises. The presentation will provide a set of guiding principles within a framework inspired by agile methods to manage and deliver effective strategic AI programs in realistic enterprise environments.

Bio: 

Fernando Nunez-Mendoza, a serial technology entrepreneur and disruptor, is founder, chief executive officer, and chief technology officer of fonYou, a fast-growing international company born in Barcelona, Spain. fonYou’s mission is to build the mobile carrier of the future powered by AI. Before fonYou, he was a management consulting partner at Accenture and Diamond Cluster International helping global telecommunications, technology, and financial services firms embrace the internet and thrive in the brave new digital world. In his earlier career, Fernando worked for the European Space Agency and lectured and performed research in computer engineering and neural networks.

Fernando holds, MSEE and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Spain), was an invited Visiting Scholar at Purdue University and is alumni of Stanford University Graduate School of Business.