It was great to be back in Cambridge last week lecturing with Dr Mark Thompson on Digital Innovation and Transformation @ Judge Business School Executive Education Programmes. 20181115_095722My contribution was a deep dive into the digital infrastructures which are transforming our digital economy. I talked about Cloud Computing as transformational in enabling Data and Algorithms to have agency in changing business environments. Central to this transformation is Artificial Intelligence (AI) which I argued to be a means of industrialising data-analytics at scale. Through AI and cloud computing, organisations can share data across their organisational boundaries in order to derive new business benefit. For example an FMCG company might harness AI to automatically integrate data from wholesalers, distributes and retailers with complex production data, external statistics on consumer behaviour, logistics movement or meteorology. Through this integration an AI algorithm may better forecast demand fluctuations and thus reduce costs than a closed data-process. Achieving this though requires effective, secure and agreed interfacing between companies for large data-sets and complex pooled data processes. This digital interfacing is the focus of my current research efforts: https://interfacereasoning.com/  
(Banner image (CC) from Rept0n1x : Used with thanks).

Written by Dr Will Venters