Achieving operational excellence with AI
Achieving operational excellence with AI

Frameworks like Lean Six Sigma and business process management (BPM) first gained traction because they promised clarity in the chaos—a structured way to bring order to messy, sprawling operations. Lean Six Sigma emphasized statistical rigor and quality control; BPM created end-to-end maps of how work should flow across departments. Both offered a repeatable way to…

Teaching AI to run with the turbines

Artificial intelligence may have captured the public imagination through chatbots and image generators, but some of its most consequential use cases are unfolding far from consumer-facing tools. In industries where physical infrastructure, operational continuity, and safety are paramount, AI is becoming a core operating layer. With its sprawling industrial systems and constant stream of operational…

Agriculture is ready for AI, but its data isn’t
Agriculture is ready for AI, but its data isn’t

Artificial intelligence is transforming what is possible in agriculture, but industry leaders should be wary of investing in AI without first laying the groundwork.  The use cases are promising, especially for an industry navigating volatile fertilizer costs, unpredictable weather, and margins that leave little room for error. Research shows AI-enabled predictive models can improve crop…

Building tech in the world’s secret R&D hub
Building tech in the world’s secret R&D hub

Apple. Anthropic. Disney Research. Google. Meta. Microsoft. NVIDIA. OpenAI. Few places outside Silicon Valley can claim R&D hubs from all of these companies. Fewer still are concentrated in a city of just over 400,000 people—roughly half the size of San Francisco. Over the past two decades, however, many of the world’s most influential technology companies…

Agent confidence on the technical frontier
Agent confidence on the technical frontier

Enterprise investment in AI is booming. Gartner is calling 2026 an “inflection year” for organizations to align their AI projects with strategic business objectives. As the pressure to prove ROI mounts, executives and technology leaders are looking to agentic AI to drive the measurable financial outcomes their businesses seek. A prime opportunity for AI agents…

Repositioning retail for the AI era

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping retail, but not in the ways consumers might immediately notice. The biggest transformation may not be flashy virtual try-ons or chatbot shopping assistants, but in how decisions are made behind the scenes: how products surface in search results, how inventory moves through supply chains, how engineers ship code faster, and…

The emergence of the web data infrastructure layer for AI
The emergence of the web data infrastructure layer for AI

AI is booming. New use cases are emerging each day. To capitalize on the technology’s potential, enterprises require data at scale. In many cases, though, the relevant information is blocked or unstructured, which limits its use by AI models.  To understand this challenge, consider the foundation of the web itself. The web was not designed…

Learning to lead in a hybrid human-AI enterprise
Learning to lead in a hybrid human-AI enterprise

As adoption of AI agents looks set to surge by as much as 300% in the next two years, leadership teams are carefully considering the implications of a hybrid human-AI workforce.  Unlike existing enterprise-level automation that relies on manual input, AI agents are capable of autonomously coordinating complex tasks, interacting with multiple tools and environments across…

Rehumanizing global health care with agentic AI
Rehumanizing global health care with agentic AI

The global health care sector is under increasing strain.  Decades of chronic underinvestment and constraints in recruitment have coincided with a surge in demand for services for aging populations. Gaps in provision are already taking a toll, with fragmented access to care and high rates of stress and burnout among staff. And it’s getting worse.…

Rethinking organizational design in the age of agentic AI
Rethinking organizational design in the age of agentic AI

Amid rapidly growing adoption of enterprise-level AI agents, there’s a disconnect emerging between ambition and execution.  Although 85% of organizations say they want to be agentic within the next three years, 76% say their current operations and infrastructure can’t support that change. They cite a lack of readiness across people, processes, and workflows.  The sticky…