Introduction to AI
AI technologies continue to expand their capabilities to perform human tasks, gaining interest from companies that seek to invest and embark on a transformational journey to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations, products, and services. Before adopting these new technologies in their organizations, it is critical for leaders to understand what AI can do, the benefits it provides, and the challenges that might be encountered. Learn how different types of AI can be used for different purposes.
Key Takeaways:
- Understand the general principles of automation with technology
- Understand the hype and reality of AI dangers
- Distinguish the different types of AI and what they are best used for
- Choose who you need on your team for your AI project
- See how machine learning, generative AI, and agentic AI work
Data Analytics
Data is the fuel of AI. Artificial Intelligence projects do not follow the same precepts as traditional programming projects. While they can use similar agile processes, they are not designed to add features and functions as they mature, but rather to use data to improve accuracy. Learn to identify data readiness for your potential AI project and to optimize the process of using data to solve the problem.
Key Takeaways:
- Understand how data is used with different AI techniques
- Identify projects whose data makes them conducive to the use of AI
- Address problems with your data
- Explore the AI improvement process using data
Process Optimization
Artificial Intelligence is set to impact every part of your organization, from optimizing back-end business processes to enhancing customer experiences. AI enables organizations to rethink their core processes and gain a competitive edge in the industry. The impact of AI in how businesses operate is evident in sectors like manufacturing, distribution, transportation, professional services, and healthcare—and this transformation is only accelerating.
This module offers a structured framework to help you effectively leverage AI to optimize your business processes. You will also gain the skills to create AI roadmaps and prepare your organization for change.
Key Takeaways:
- Explore Assessment Methods: Understand the tools and methods for assessing processes to identify areas for improvement.
- Perform Rapid Process Assessments: Conduct assessments to pinpoint key processes that are likely to benefit from AI integration.
- Evaluate Readiness for AI: Assess your organization’s readiness to implement AI-driven process optimization effectively.
- Develop an AI Roadmap: Create a strategic roadmap to align your organization on the overall vision, goals, and milestones for your AI program.
AI for Customer Service and Customer Experience
Customer service and customer experience are increasingly important ways for brands to differentiate from the competition. The problem is that truly top-notch customer service is frightfully expensive—which is why most customer service is mediocre, or worse. AI can change that equation, but early adopters have learned that poorly deployed AI damages customer relationships as surely as indifferent human service does.
This module gives you an honest framework for identifying where AI creates genuine value, where it creates risk, and how to build a human and AI customer service model that lowers costs and raises satisfaction.
Key Takeaways:
- How AI is evolving from chatbots to intelligent agents—and what that means for your service strategy
- How data privacy regulations affect customer data collection
- How to use social listening and predictive analytics to get ahead of customer needs
- How to evaluate AI tools for reliability, security, and consistency, not just cost
- How to design customer journeys that use AI where it excels and human judgment where it matters most
AI for Marketing and Sales
Digital technology has revolutionized marketing and sales. That's not new. Sales and marketing have also always relied on the human touch—and they still do, but AI is increasingly automating tasks that could once only be performed by people. That’s driving even bigger changes: how customers find brands, evaluate them, and increasingly, how they buy.
AI isn't just the future of sales and marketing. It's sales and marketing's present reality—one where AI-powered search is reshaping discovery, new advertising channels are opening inside AI platforms, and your customers' buying journeys are being compressed in ways that make familiar playbooks less reliable. Understanding what's actually changed may make the difference in your company's long-term success… and your own.
Key Takeaways:
- How AI can help you find your best customers and reach them more effectively
- How AI is disrupting search, discovery, and the metrics marketers have relied on for decades
- The reality of AI-driven personalization, along with the data and privacy challenges that come with it
- How leading companies evaluate and select AI-powered tools to improve sales and marketing effectiveness
- Processes for implementing AI capabilities into your sales and marketing function responsibly and measurably
AI in Finance
Recent advances in AI have demonstrated to non-technical people the power of this family of technologies. While AI won’t replace every finance professional, it is already changing the way financial professionals perform their day-to-day work, and the pace is faster than most people realize.
This module focuses on corporate finance, the finance function inside a company (FP&A, accounting, treasury, compliance, risk), not banks or hedge funds. After grounding ourselves in the role of finance in the corporation, we will move through five Acts: the wake-up call on how quickly AI adoption is happening, a framework for seeing clearly through vendor hype, the three waves of AI maturity in finance (automate, augment, transform), hands-on building with AI tools, and leading the transition in your own organization. Along the way, hands-on exercises will let you practice evaluating an AI pitch, assess your own organization’s maturity, and build something yourself.
Key Takeaways:
- The judgment to separate real AI opportunity from expensive hype, and a framework for evaluating both
- A practical understanding of where AI is transforming each step of the finance workflow today
- A personal action plan: tools you can use, a project you can pitch, and the risks you need to manage
ROI of AI
As Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This module gets past the hype and focuses on the results and returns that AI is generating for businesses. You’ll learn:
- What is the return-on-investment (ROI) companies are currently seeing from AI?
- Who is winning and who is not, and why?
- Where are the pitfalls to avoid?
- What is the path to success?
- How can you measure AI progress and calculate the ROI of AI for your AI initiative?
To ensure your business generates a strong return, we’ll go through 6 steps to a successful ROI of AI. Grounded in case studies and use case examples, each step will be tracked with a company that has used AI to its advantage so you can see how to apply it to your business or situation.
Ethics in AI
There is no doubt that AI presents an opportunity for radical advancements in many fields such as agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, computer science and cybersecurity, to name a few. However, with each advancement comes a number of questions and concerns, ranging from business to legal to ethical implications. There is no easy answer to these questions, but they cannot be ignored.
This module will center around the advent of AI and how the business community, and any community for that matter, should view AI from an ethical and legal viewpoint.
Key Takeaways:
- Consider the ethical and legal implications of using AI systems
- Be better equipped to evaluate business decisions related to AI
- Gain a deeper understanding of the impact of bias and computational errors in AI
The Future of Work in the AI-Accelerated World
This dynamic module explores how AI is dramatically reshaping every facet of the new world of work: from transforming the business climate we operate within and the popular careers we will pursue, to welcoming the AI coworkers we will collaborate with, and the competencies we will need to thrive.
Structured across four sections, this session covers the profound shifts in roles, responsibilities, and required skills, and includes two applied exercises to reinforce learning.
Key Takeaways:
- AI's New Climate
- Challenges and benefits for AI-era workers
- Core principles of the new work era
- New AI Coworkers
- How AI reshapes the human-technology relationship
- AI's varied roles in our work
- How AI reshapes employer expectations
- AI's Impact on Careers
- In-demand AI-era skills
- How AI transforms professional roles
- Success Strategies in the AI Age
- Strategies for career relevance
- Featured Exercises:
- Framework for reinventing job roles
- Roadmap for a personalized AI learning plan
AI for All: Roadmap to Success in the Agentic Era
This module demystifies how AI projects span the full spectrum, from exploration to disruption and how the rise of agentic AI is redrawing that map. Whether you're intrigued by the operationalization of AI use cases, the integration of AI agents into business strategy, or the future of autonomous, goal-driven systems, this session is tailored to unveil the layers of AI's impact across industries and domains.
Through real-world case studies, practical insights, and forward-thinking ideas, we will provide a framework to harness actionable strategies and envision how agentic AI can become your business multiplier in an ever-changing digital arena where the question is no longer just what AI can generate, but what it can do on your behalf.
Key Takeaways:
- Learn how AI projects are planned across the spectrum, from predictive to generative to agentic
- Explore key approaches to target and identify the right AI problems and where agents add real leverage
- Determine key metrics to evaluate the success of AI, including how to measure agent behavior, reliability, and business impact
- Examine the future of AI: How is agentic AI different from GenAI, and what does it change about governance and trust?
Program Overview
For an overview of our Mini-MBA: Artificial Intelligence program plus program benefits and outcomes, please click here.