AI & The Next Economy Live
Agenda
12:30-1:00 pm – Registration, Refreshments, and Informal Networking
1:10-1:35 pm – Keynote: From Experimentation to Transformation with Anand Mahurkar
1:40-2:40 pm – Experimentation to Transformation: Framing the Challenge Live Case with Sam Goldberg & Paul Carlile
2:40-4:00 pm – Refreshments & Breakout Sessions
4:00-4:20 pm – Closing Synthesis and Reflections
4:20-5:45 pm – AI in Action: Networking Reception and Showcase
Keynote: From Experimentation to Transformation
Anand Mahurkar, Founder & CEO of Findability Sciences, offers this insight: “Most enterprises are not failing at AI; they are failing at deciding who owns the workflow after AI enters it. Decision rights, not models, are the key to success.” He presents one initiative that scaled, one we shut down, and what he would do differently now.
Experimentation to Transformation: Framing the Challenge Live Case
A real business case explored in a candid, practical format. Sam Goldberg, Co-Founder, Chief Strategy Officer & General Counsel at Unburdn.ai, and BU’s Paul Carlile, Professor of Information Systems & Senior Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, works through the problem in real time, identifying the business objective, relevant AI capabilities, organizational constraints, data requirements, trade-offs, risks, and first steps.
Breakout Session
Everything You Learned About Prompting Is Wrong
The technology has changed dramatically, but much of the conventional wisdom about prompting has not. Today’s AI models are better at understanding natural language, following context, asking questions, working iteratively, and helping users improve the instructions they provide. Effective prompting is increasingly less about memorizing the perfect formula and more about clearly communicating the problem, supplying the right context, defining what good looks like, and knowing how to work with AI through an iterative conversation.
Led by the Sam Goldberf from unburdn AI and H. Sami Karaca, Clinical Assistant Professor in Markets, Public Policy, & Law at Boston University Questrom School of Business, this hands-on session separates durable prompting principles from outdated prompt lore. Through live demonstrations and practical exercises, participants learn a simpler, more effective approach to working with today’s AI tools—and leave with a repeatable framework they can apply immediately to their own work.
Breakout Session
From Pilot to P&L
Many organizations have launched AI experiments. This session focuses on the work that converts experimentation into sustained business value. Participants examine how leaders select initiatives for scale, integrate AI into th operating model, redesign workflows and decision rights, and establish meaningful measures of performance.
Anand Mahurka, Founder & CEO of Findability Sciences, and Venkat Venkatraman, Professor Emeritus in Information Systems at Boston University Questrom School of Business, lead this discussion on organizational design, ownership, implementation discipline, and measurable results.
Breakout Session
Leading an AI-Confident Workforce
Meaningful AI adoption involves technology, leadership, communication, learning, and trust. Employees need a clear understanding of what is changing, why it is changing, how their work is affected, and what is expected of them. This session, facilitated by Michel Anteby, Professor of Management & Organizations at Boston University Questrom School of Business, examines how leaders build confidence, fluency, trust, and accountability while addressing concerns about job redesign, accuracy, privacy, fairness, and professional identity. The focus is organizational leadership and workforce transformation.
Speaker Bios
Anand Mahurkar
Founder & CEO of Findability Sciences
He founded Findability Sciences, a Boston-based firm, with the ambitious vision of equipping enterprises with the ability to efficiently find and utilize information. Anand successfully grew the company, both in size and scope, over six years. He has spearheaded the company’s development into a leader in AI solutions, integrating Big Data, Cognitive Computing, and Automated Prediction
Sam Goldberg
Co-Founder & General Counsel at unburdn AI
Veteran in startup founding, fundraising, revenue scaling, product marketing, IP strategy, and operations. Sam Goldberg is a patent attorney, AI professor, and the Co-Founder of Unburdn.ai, a vertically integrated AI implementation company. Unburdn has a phenomenal leadership team of accomplished startup founders, AI professors, inventors, and technology innovators.
Paul Carlile
Peter and Deborah Wexler Professor of Management and Information Systems & Senior Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at Boston University Questrom School of Business.
Paul’s research has focused on how to address the knowledge boundaries that exist among people in different expertise domains. Paul is one of the world’s foremost experts on what can be done to address those boundaries in order to enhance collaboration and innovation. He has used this expertise to develop and design ways to drive innovation in the automotive, software, aerospace, and pharmaceutical industries. According to an annual study conducted by Stanford University, Paul is among the top 2% of all global scientists in terms of research impact.
In his work over a decade ago as Senior Associate Dean for Innovation, Paul has focused on the enhancement of student learning through curricular innovation and new models of program delivery. This has included the launch of an integrated and experientially-based Master of Science degree in Management Studies (MSMS), the Online MBA, and the new Online Masters in AI in Business.
Paul holds a BA in Philosophy and Masters in Organizational Behavior from Brigham Young University and a PhD in Organizational Behavior from the University of Michigan. Prior to graduate school Paul helped start two technology companies.
H. Sami Karaca
Clinical Assistant Professor in Markets, Public Policy, & Law at Boston University Questrom School of Business
Most of the AI conversation is about what machines can generate. Sami Karaca, Clinical Assistant Professor in Markets, Public Policy & Law and Faculty Director of the Online Master of Science in AI in Business at Boston University Questrom School of Business, is more interested in what they can measure, and in what people do with the answer.
His research asks two questions. First, can AI read at scale well enough to tell us what the world is actually saying? At Questrom’s Mehrotra Institute he leads SENDEX, a human-guided AI system that has turned millions of newspaper articles into measures of who is speaking, about what, and toward whom, the detail a single sentiment score averages away. Second, why do people react so strongly when the rules of a reward change? His work on loyalty programs, from airline miles to Starbucks Rewards, explains why companies keep rewriting the rules and why customers get so angry when they do.
Before Boston University, Karaca spent nearly a decade on the faculty at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, where he founded the Center for Analytics & Insights, an interdisciplinary research center that paired university researchers with leading companies on real business problems. He holds a BS in industrial engineering from Purdue and went on to Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management for a master’s in managerial economics and a PhD in marketing. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard Business School and Kellogg.
Venkat Venkatraman
Professor Emeritus at Boston University Questrom School of Business
Venkat Venkatraman is widely regarded as a leading global authority on digital business strategy. Prior to BU he taught strategy at MIT Sloan School of Management and the London Business School.
Over the last three decades, Venkat’s research and teaching have focused on how companies win in the Digital Age, where digital technologies shape and support products, processes, and services. His widely acclaimed 2017 book, The Digital Matrix: New Rules for Business Transformation through Technology, was updated in 2023. His new co-authored book, Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future, was published by the Harvard Business Review Press in March 2024.
Venkat has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India, and a Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a distinguished alumnus of IIM Calcutta.
Michel Anteby
Professor of Management & Organizations at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and Sociology at Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences.
Michel’s research looks at how individuals relate to their work, their occupations, and the organizations they belong to. He examines more specifically the practices people engage in at work that help them sustain their chosen cultures or identities. In doing so, his research contributes to a better understanding of how these cultures and identities come to be and manifest themselves. Studied populations have included airport security officers, clinical anatomists, factory craftsmen, ghostwriters, puppeteers, subway drivers, and university professors.
Prof. Anteby’s research has appeared in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Organization Science, Social Science & Medicine, and Social Forces.
Prof. Anteby earned a joint Ph.D. in management from New York University and in sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris), after completing an M.A. in economics at the Sorbonne and an M.P.A. at Harvard.