Stay ConnectedThe AI in Business Podcast is for non-technical business leaders who need to find AI opportunities, align AI capabilities with strategy, and deliver ROI.
Each week, Emerj research staff and journalists interview top AI executives from Fortune 2000 firms and unicorn startups – uncovering trends, use-cases, and best practices for practical AI adoption.
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Copyright: © Daniel Faggella, 2014
Energy organizations have made progress in safety, but most still rely on backward‑looking investigations rather than systems that anticipate when risk is rising. In this episode, Patricio Rivera, Former Vice President of HSE International at Oxy, joins host Matthew DeMello and examines how learning from good days and leveraging existing observation data can strengthen an organization's ability to predict and prevent safety‑critical events. He highlights the practical shifts required to extend periods of stable operations, reinforce the controls most likely to fail, and align safety practices with broader business performance expectations. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at http://go.emerj.com/partner
AI enthusiasm has outpaced enterprise readiness, leaving many organizations stuck with pilots that work in the lab but fail to deliver meaningful value in production. In this episode, Lawrence Whittle, Chief Strategy Officer at HTEC Group, joins Emerj's Marilie Fouché to examine how the gap between individual users, isolated use cases, and true end‑to‑end sequences prevents companies from moving beyond experimentation. He highlights the practical shifts required — smaller real deployments, tighter scopes, faster iteration cycles, and integrated expertise — to build momentum and translate AI concepts into tangible business results. This episode is sponsored by HTEC. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner
Agentic AI is running into a hard limit: most enterprise systems, security layers, and operational backends aren't yet built to support automated execution at scale. Alex Tyrrel, SVP and CTO of Health at Wolters Kluwer, joins Emerj's Matthe DeMello to unpack how agentic systems adapt models to domain‑specific tasks and act directly inside regulated environments. He outlines the practical requirements for higher‑velocity automation, including tighter APIs and entitlements, stronger observability and compliance, and backend capacity that can handle machine‑driven throughput. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at http://go.emerj.com/partner
A widening gap between retiring experts, manual craftsmanship, and limited process visibility is making it increasingly difficult for manufacturers to maintain consistency, prevent errors early, and onboard new operators effectively. In this episode, Sebastian Dykas, Director of Manufacturing, Engineering, and Maintenance at Smith+Nephew, joins Emerj's Marilie Fouche to examine how capturing best practices and connecting machines for real‑time data can tighten control and reduce variability across shifts. He highlights the practical moves leaders can make now — from standardizing training and strengthening process baselines to introducing data‑driven feedback loops that prevent scrap and stabilize production. This episode is sponsored by Poka. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner
Volatility is exposing the limits of traditional scenario planning, where siloed KPIs and thin operational margins prevent enterprises from seeing how disruptions cascade across forecasting, procurement, and operations. In this episode, Dr. Gopalendu Pal, Director of Operations at Target, joins us to examine how running hundreds of interconnected simulations enables leaders to understand enterprise‑level tradeoffs and make decisions that hold up under shifting demand and supply constraints. He highlights the need to simplify and stabilize core processes so that automation and AI strengthen decision‑making rather than amplify existing operational weaknesses. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at http://go.emerj.com/partner
Voice-based fraud has moved from a fringe security concern to a primary operational risk for financial institutions and enterprise contact centers, and the authentication methods most organizations rely on are no longer adequate. In this episode, Ken Morino, Director of Market and Behavioral Research at Modulate, examines how enterprise leaders can deploy real-time voice intelligence to detect fraud patterns, protect customer trust, and build clear accountability structures across fraud, CX, and compliance teams. The discussion covers where to prioritize investment first, how to integrate voice AI without disrupting existing infrastructure, and why smaller specialized models outperform large general-purpose systems in regulated environments. This episode is sponsored by Modulate. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner
The consistency gap in enterprise AI represents a critical failure point where unpredictable system behavior outside of controlled demos threatens to derail executive sponsorship and regulatory compliance. In this episode, Amar Akshat, SVP & Chief Architect at Paysafe, examines how leaders can move beyond experimental shadow AI by embedding determinism and high-threshold guardrails directly into the production pipeline. The discussion outlines a rigorous evaluation framework centered on treating prompts as versioned intellectual property, implementing Know Your Agent (KYA) policy envelopes, and ensuring every agentic decision remains holistically auditable. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at https://go.emerj.com/partner
Legacy financial systems often trap organizations in "data swamps" where AI is mistakenly treated as a magic fix for fundamentally broken manual architectures. In this episode, Juan Orlandini, CTO of North America at Insight, outlines why senior executives must distinguish between statistical AI outputs and the mathematical precision required for financial compliance to avoid significant reporting risks. The conversation provides a roadmap for building a scalable operating layer by prioritizing data engineering and leveraging established vendor knowledge to protect long-term investment. This episode is sponsored by K1x. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at https://go.emerj.com/partner
R&D teams are starting to advance AI capabilities faster than they can translate them into measurable business value, creating mounting friction between scientific progress and operational reality. In this episode, Aziz Nazha, Global Head of AI Innovations Institute at Incyte Pharmaceuticals, examines how culture, talent, infrastructure, and expectation‑setting determine whether AI meaningfully improves drug discovery and development. He highlights the practical shifts required — from redesigning workflows to disciplined upskilling and targeted validation cycles — to ensure AI adoption accelerates cycle times rather than getting stalled by organizational bottlenecks. This episode is sponsored by Deloitte. Learn how brands like Deloitte work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner
A recurring challenge for leaders is that the use cases they expect to automate rarely match what customers actually struggle with once large‑scale conversation data is analyzed. In this episode, Shezan Kazi, Head of AI Transformation and AI Products at Dialpad, examines how autonomous agents should take the first pass on high‑volume deterministic requests, when they must hand off to humans, and why confidence scoring and oversight models are essential for safe deployment. He highlights the practical steps leaders can take — from starting with low‑risk, high‑impact tasks to redesigning processes around real interaction data — to expand automation responsibly and improve customer outcomes over time. This episode is sponsored by Dialpad. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner
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