Abstract: 

Over the course of the past year, we’ve seen artificial intelligence move from futuristic application to business imperative. Organizations are starting to recognize AI as a strategic capability and a practical tool that powers critical business processes and transforms user experiences to drive large scale efficiency and innovation.

CEOs and board members are now asking: What impact will AI have on my organization? How do I go about applying AI to drive business results and prevent potential business model disruption?

To solve real business problems with AI, enterprises need both an AI software platform and a partner with a fundamentally deep understanding of their specific industry and technology requirements. Employing a horizontal data science platform or consuming a general-purpose API-based cognitive service will not adequately solve complex business problems leading to expensive and time consuming AI or data science experiments that never make it into production. Simply put, using an industry-specific AI software platform speeds implementation and ultimately results in a faster return-on-investment.

In this presentation, Manoj Saxena will share practical examples where global businesses have realized breakthrough value from AI and Blockchain initiatives while also highlighting some of the common myths and short coming of Enterprise AI.  Manoj will then open up the conversation for Q&A and discussion around how audience members are already using AI in their organization, major challenges with adoption of Enterprise AI at scale, and the opportunities for augmenting business processes with industry-specific AI.

Bio: 

Manoj Saxena is the Executive Chairman of CognitiveScale and a founding managing director of The Entrepreneurs’ Fund IV, a $100m seed fund focused exclusively on the cognitive computing and machine intelligence market with eight active investments. 



Previously, he was IBM’s first general manager of IBM Watson (2011-14), where his team built the world’s first cognitive systems for healthcare, retail, and financial services.  He received the IBM Chairman’s award for Watson commercialization and helped with the formation of Watson Business Group in January 2014 with a $1B investment from IBM.



Prior to IBM, he successfully founded, scaled, and sold two venture-backed software companies within a five-year span. Webify, an emerging leader in industry-specific SOA middleware, was acquired by IBM in 2006, and Exterprise, a business process collaboration company, was purchased by Commerce One in 2001.

Saxena also served as Chairman for The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, San Antonio Branch through December, 2017, and oversees the Saxena Family Foundation.  He holds nine software patents.

Saxena holds a masters degree in business administration from Michigan State University, and a masters in management sciences from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science in Pilani, India.