The AI in Business Podcast

Human-Centered AI Development Strategies for CPG Leaders - with Shaje Ganny of Procter & Gamble 02.06.2026 29min

A widening gap has emerged between the speed of AI innovation and the ability of large enterprises to deploy it responsibly, leading many organizations to repeat avoidable mistakes in scaling. In this episode, Shaje Ganny, Author, Guest Lecturer, TEDx Speaker, and Digital Transformation Director at Procter & Gamble, joins Matthew DeMello to examine how leaders can ground AI adoption in clear business value and human-centered operational design. The discussion highlights practical considerations for evaluating AI through its impact on the company, the consumer, and the surrounding workforce community, and the executive education and policy foundations required to move from pilots to reliable enterprise deployment. Emerj works with a select group of AI vendors to reach Fortune 500 decision makers through research, media, and direct access. If you want to be considered, download our media kit at http://emerj.com/AD1

The Pricing Shift Reshaping Enterprise AI Spend - with Adam Mansfield of UpperEdge 01.06.2026 37min

The rapid shift from seat‑based licensing to hybrid and consumption‑based AI pricing has made technology spend significantly harder for enterprises to predict and control. In this episode, Adam Mansfield, Practice Leader at UpperEdge, examines how these new pricing models create financial exposure for buyers and why clear forecasting, transparency, and leverage are increasingly difficult to secure in negotiations with major vendors, in conversation with host Marilie Fouché. He highlights the practical steps leaders must take now — from auditing current usage and identifying under‑leveraged spend to engaging vendors early and using the broader. This episode is sponsored by UpperEdge. To go deeper into vendor negotiations and learn how to assess AI providers by leadership credibility and funding signals, download our free report, "5 Ways to Select the Right AI Vendor," at emerj.com/aiv3

Why the Way AI Feels Is as Important as How It Works - with Carsten Wierwille of HTEC 29.05.2026 25min

Enterprise AI initiatives treat design as a finishing step. Carsten Wierwille, Chief Product & Design Officer at HTEC, argues that this is a strategic mistake, and one that explains why so many AI investments produce tools that work technically but fail to change how people actually work. In this episode, Wierwille examines why enterprises keep building AI because they can rather than because they understand the problem, how the shift to AI-assisted ideation has moved the bottleneck from creation to review, and why the answer is not faster shipping but sharper design clarity at the start. The conversation covers the financial advisor as a model for AI force-multiplication, why the MVP framework breaks down for genuinely novel AI experiences, how design now extends to defining the evaluation criteria for AI output, and what Wierwille calls cognitive design, the practice of thinking about how users will perceive, decide, and trust before anyone writes a line of code. This episode is sponsored by HTEC. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

How Vision AI Scales Across a Manufacturing Network - with Jeff Witt 28.05.2026 23min

Computer vision implementations in manufacturing never advance beyond the pilot phase — not because the technology fails, but because deployment is treated as a software problem rather than an operational one. In this episode, Jeff Witt, Digital Transformation Leader at a Fortune 500 global leader in building materials and fiberglass composites, examines the architectural, organizational, and change management decisions that determine whether a vision AI initiative reaches production and scales. The conversation covers how to build a reusable data architecture for vision data, why shifting ownership from IT to business units accelerates deployment, and what a platform mindset — versus a point solution approach — looks like in a multi-site manufacturing environment. This episode is sponsored by Roboflow. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

AI Improving Dose Decisions and Patient Outcomes in Oncology- with Shefali Kakar of Novartis 26.05.2026 18min

The growing use of AI‑driven modeling in clinical development is exposing how limited traditional, single‑study dose selection and patient assessment methods have been for complex oncology programs. In this episode, Shefali Kakar, Global Head of PK Sciences and Oncology at Novartis, examines how deeper data integration across phases enables more precise dose decisions, clearer safety interpretation, and a more consistent understanding of patient variability alongside host Matthew DeMello. She outlines how longitudinal analysis, exposure–response modeling, and covariate evaluation are helping teams reduce unnecessary sub‑studies, tailor dosing for diverse patient groups, and strengthen cross‑functional decision‑making throughout development. According to Nielsen, 91% of podcast listening happens alone, creating a focused, distraction-light environment well suited for complex B2B messaging. Learn how leading brands and AI startups connect with enterprise AI buyer audiences at scale by downloading our media kit at go.emerj.com/partner

Breaking Free from AI Overwhelm in Banking and Financial Services - with Art Shectman of Elephant Ventures 25.05.2026 33min

The pressure on financial services AI leaders to show board-level results has intensified — yet the pace of vendor pitches, shifting tooling stacks, and stalled pilots has made action feel riskier than waiting. In this episode, Art Shectman, CEO and Founder at Elephant Ventures, breaks down why the instinct to evaluate everything before building anything is the primary obstacle to production, and what a realistic first step actually looks like inside a regulated enterprise. The conversation covers how to identify the right initial workflow, how to structure a time-boxed sprint toward a minimum viable production deployment, and how to present early AI wins to boards that have stopped trusting strategy decks. This episode is sponsored by Elephant Ventures. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

Fixing the Pilot‑to‑Production Gap in Enterprise AI - with Ronny Fehling of HTEC 22.05.2026 28min

The reason enterprise AI programmes stall is not the technology — it is the sequence in which decisions are made before and after the pilot succeeds. In this episode, Ronny Fehling, Chief AI Transformation Officer at HTEC, examines why AI initiatives lose momentum at the production threshold and what organisational conditions determine whether they make it through. The discussion covers production slices, decision gates with kill-switch authority, use case discipline, and why top-down AI mandates tend to reproduce the same failure modes regardless of budget. This episode is sponsored by HTEC. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

Why Deepfake Fraud Beats Your Workflows, Not Your Technology - with Jon-Rav Shende of Thales Group 21.05.2026 28min

Deepfake voice fraud is not bypassing enterprise security technology, it is beating the workflows agents rely on to make trust decisions in real time. In this episode, Jon-Rav Shende, Global CTO for Data and AI at Thales Group, outlines where enterprise voice channels are most exposed, why identity, urgency, and business action converging in a single call represents the highest risk point, and what a practical four-step response framework looks like for regulated organisations. The discussion covers how to map risky voice journeys, define escalation decision points, build the evidence chains auditors and cyber insurers will require, and deploy AI as a risk signal layer without automating high-risk actions beyond appropriate controls. This episode is sponsored by Modulate. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

Scaling Scientific R&D with AI Supercomputing Infrastructure — with Thomas Fuchs of Eli Lilly 19.05.2026 25min

A growing share of pharmaceutical innovation is now constrained not by scientific imagination, but by the infrastructure required to support AI at scale. In this episode of the AI in Business podcast, Thomas Fuchs, Chief AI Officer at Eli Lilly & Company, joins Matthew DeMello to explore how Lilly's new AI supercomputing platform is reshaping scientific discovery and enterprise operations. The conversation examines how large-scale computing enables more advanced models, secure and usable data environments, and faster scientific iteration across the organization. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

The Hidden Risk in Every Enterprise AI Vendor Contract - with John Belden of UpperEdge 18.05.2026 28min

Boards are pushing CIOs to commit to AI strategies built on contracts written for an entirely different era of enterprise software. In this episode, John Belden, Chief of Research and Strategy at UpperEdge, breaks down the six dimensions of uncertainty CIOs now face when weighing major AI and ERP commitments, and explains why the next five years are about flexibility, not productivity. The conversation covers the case for tighter SI accountability around adaptability, the practical role of contractually-protected optionality, and the difference between performance theater and the kind of continuous learning that keeps a transformation honest. This episode is sponsored by UpperEdge. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

The Architecture Shift Behind Reliable Enterprise AI - with Ravi Marwaha of Arango 14.05.2026 37min

Context defines accurate, reliable AI decision‑making, forcing enterprises to confront the fragmentation that prevents systems from accessing the information those decisions depend on. In this episode, Ravi Marwaha, Chief Operating Officer & Chief Technology Product Officer at Arango, examines how AI breaks down when it is asked to reason across disconnected architectures that cannot supply a unified, critical context. The discussion highlights how leaders can isolate the information that drives real decisions, structure access so AI can use it at the moment of action, and establish governance as agent‑generated outcomes move into production. This episode is sponsored by Arango. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

Why Manufacturing's Most Valuable Data Isn't in Any System — with Anand Gnanamoorthy of Ingersoll Rand 13.05.2026 31min

A significant share of manufacturing knowledge still lives in the heads of retiring workers, and the window to capture it is closing as operations push toward AI-enabled ways of working. In this episode, Anand Gnanamoorthy, Director of Corporate Strategy and AI at Ingersoll Rand, examines how manufacturers can digitize tribal knowledge, structured operational data, and decades of unstructured archives before that context disappears. The discussion covers separating data, insights, and decision-making across AI deployments; tapping messy, unstructured data without over-cleaning it; anchoring use cases to the frontline worker rather than the process; and treating every AI project as permanently in pilot mode. This episode is sponsored by Poka. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

Why Predictive AI in Service Only Works on the Right Foundation - with Niken Patel of Neuron7.ai 13.05.2026 28min

Enterprise service leaders are realizing that deploying AI for simple productivity gains fails to resolve the underlying issues that cause repeat truck rolls and high costs. In this episode, Niken Patel, CEO and Co-Founder at Neuron7.ai, unpacks why moving beyond basic automation requires a deterministic intelligence layer to make fragmented data ready for complex resolution decision-making. The discussion focuses on benchmarking industry performance, educating core teams on AI readiness, and establishing a data foundation that enables a transition from reactive repairs to predictive service models. This episode is sponsored by Neuron7.ai Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at go.emerj.com/partner

Building Predictive Safety Systems in Energy Operations - with Patricio Rivera of Oxy 12.05.2026 23min

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

Fixing the Pilot‑to‑Production Gap in Enterprise AI - with Lawrence Whittle of HTEC Group 11.05.2026 37min

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

From Experimentation to Clinical-grade AI in Healthcare - with Alex Tyrrell of Wolters Kluwer 05.05.2026 30min

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

Capturing Tribal Knowledge to Solve the Manufacturing Skills Gap - with Sebastian Dykas of Smith+Nephew 01.05.2026 34min

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

Designing Supply Chains for Volatility - with Dr. Gopalendu Pal of Target 28.04.2026 26min

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

Operationalizing Real-Time Voice Intelligence for FinServ and CX - with Ken Morino of Modulate 24.04.2026 37min

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

Building Trustworthy AI for Enterprise Workflows - with Amar Akshat of PaySafe 21.04.2026 20min

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