Defining An Intelligent Business

InnovationAIDefining An Intelligent BusinessByJohn Werner,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I am an MIT Senior Fellow & Lecturer, 5x-founder & VC investing in AIFollow AuthorMay 19, 2026, 11:52am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Graph, Digital Display, Stock Market Data, Bank Account, ChartgettyWe’ve all heard about business intelligence, the data and insights that drive improvement, but how do you go about creating an intelligent business?That simple semantic flip makes a difference in how we discuss the technologies that matter now. But scouring the internet, I found very little on the latter construction, although I did find this from IBM:“The pressure to transform, from the board, from leadership, from the market, never lets up, writes an IBM analyst, in aid of talking about this topic. “What is hype and what is real? It’s unclear. FOMO is a thing…but with so much at stake, what if you make the wrong decision? So, what if there were a path through the confusion and complexity? There is, and it leads beyond surface-level fixes to serious competitive advantage. IBM calls it creating a smarter business.” (italics theirs)The suggestion, in a nutshell, is that businesses can use AI agents to better leverage enterprise data. But that’s pretty vague. And these days, the average business is hungering for this kind of advice.Thoughts from Boston ConferenceI’ll reveal where I heard the term “intelligent business.” I was sitting in on a panel segment at the Imagination in Action event in April, held here at MIT. (Disclaimer: April’s IIA event is an annual conference that I help to facilitate.) Prakul Sharma of Deloitte was interviewing Cindi Howson of Thoughtspot, Manuela Veloso of Carnegie Mellon University, Josep Puig Ruiz, the director of the Nasdaq Data Science division, and Al Bugerai of Snowflake, about the push to build an...