LIVE HYBRID: Risky Business: What’s Your AI Equation? (April 4, 2026)

Overview

AI is everywhere, and there are so many different ways to explore its role in our lives. We all need to get comfortable with three equations in this inevitable future in our lives: Addition (automating output), Multiplication (augmenting output), and Exponentiation (amplifying output). In this presentation, Professor Venkat Venkatraman will explore how these equations play key roles in how we approach the advantages and risks of artificial intelligence in our professional lives. 

Venkat Venkatraman is a leading global authority on digital business strategy. He is currently a Professor Emeritus at Boston University. He held the David J. McGrath Jr. Professorship of Management at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business for over 25 years. Before this, he taught strategy at the MIT Sloan School of Management for nine years and at the London Business School for two years.  

For the past forty years, Venkat’s research and teaching have concentrated on how companies succeed in the Digital Age, where digital technologies influence and improve products, processes, and services. His highly regarded 2017 book, The Digital Matrix: New Rules for Business Transformation through Technology, was updated in 2023. His most recent 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. This book was one of the top three finalists for the Academy of Management’s Best Book of the Year award and the Thinkers50 award. 

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.  

Venkat’s doctoral thesis received the Academy of Management’s AT Kearney Best Dissertation Prize, and the paper derived from the thesis, published in Management Science, is among the most cited strategy papers in the journal’s history. According to Google Scholar, he ranks as one of the most highly cited researchers in management and is a leader in digital strategy, with over 65,000 citations. Recently, Stanford University recognized him as one of the top 2% of global scientists based on research impact. His work on business-IT alignment, published in IBM Systems Journal, was seen as a pivotal moment in our understanding of IT strategy and remains widely referenced.  

Venkat writes papers for both academic publications and managerial audiences. His scholarly research has been published in prominent journals such as Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Information Systems Research, Academy of Management Journal, and Academy of Management Review, among others. Over the last three decades, Venkat’s articles for managers have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, and the Financial Times.  

Venkat has consulted, delivered presentations, and conducted workshops globally for companies such as IBM, Ericsson, GE, BP, John Deere, Merck, GM, AWS, FedEx, Microsoft, McKinsey & Co., Philip Morris International, WPP, Sony, and Tesco. He served as a member of the Digital Technology Advisory Group at Canal+ in Paris for 6 years.  

Venkat can be reached via LinkedIn and Twitter @NVenkatraman.  

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