The beauty industry is massive, fast-paced, and hard to predict. There are 20,000 brands worldwide, and microtrends can spread around the globe in hours. That’s the challenge facing Kalindi Mehta, Global VP for Consumer Foresight Strategy and Predictive Analytics at the Estée Lauder Companies. In the latest episode, she lays out how AI is transforming her industry, and explains how the technology can help all companies be more agile, improve their decision making, and reimagine their workflows.

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Cassie Kozyrkov created the discipline of decision intelligence, combining the power of AI with data science to enable companies to make better choices. She’s now an AI advisor, and she writes the popular Decision Intelligence newsletter. Kozyrkov joined the WorkLab podcast to discuss how leaders can maximize the potential of AI and data, why having too many options is as unhelpful as having too few, and how to avoid falling prey to confirmation bias.

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AI has crossed an important threshold, says Microsoft CMO of AI at Work Jared Spataro: it now has remarkable abilities to think and reason. What does that mean for organizations? Intelligence is on tap. “You can now buy intelligence like you would purchase a commodity like electricity,” he explains. Spataro joined the podcast to discuss what it means for business, how he already sees agents transforming workflows and team structures, and why leaders need to “hire their first digital employee” now.

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DJ Patil was the first-ever US Chief Data Scientist and has led some of the biggest data initiatives in government and business. He has also been at the forefront of leveraging AI to solve the thorniest problems companies face, as well as “stupid, boring problems in the back office.” He joins the WorkLab podcast to discuss the potential of AI to change business, how leaders can drive technological transformation, and why it’s vital for data scientists to never lose sight of the human element.

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A core component of every company’s value proposition is its unique expertise. “But AI is lowering the cost of expertise,” says Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani, and that will require leaders to rethink every aspect of their organization. Lakhani has spent his career researching digital transformation, and he joins the WorkLab podcast to share insights on how leaders can avoid “falling asleep at the wheel” with AI, and what they can learn from the AI-native generation of MBAs. 

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“It’s time to replace the old linear model of success with a circular model of growth, in which goals are discovered, pursued, and adapted,” says Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She left a successful tech-marketing career to study neuroscience, and now writes the popular Ness Labs newsletter, which features insights about how our brains work that can help us navigate uncertainty and nurture innovation. She joined WorkLab to discuss what leaders can learn from neuroscience, and how to tap the potential of AI in more creative ways.

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Azeem Azhar’s mission is to help leaders stay ahead of the curve at a time when technology, especially AI, is evolving at an exponential rate. He founded the Exponential View newsletter, which offers insights and advice to an eager audience of 116,000+ people who want to get ahead in a rapidly changing world. He joined us to discuss the potential for AI to help business leaders navigate uncertainty and describe some of the ways that AI agents and deep research will fundamentally change the way we work. 

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AI is evolving at a mind-bending pace, reshaping every aspect of business. How can leaders filter out the noise to stay focused on transforming their organizations? How can they leverage the limitless potential of AI, agents, and deep research? How can they harness the latest technology to access untapped value, turbocharge their decision making, and maintain their organization’s competitive edge? In the new season of the WorkLab podcast from Microsoft, we’ll be exploring all of those questions and more.

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Learning how AI can help with a few tasks won’t lead us to unlock its true power—for that, we need to fundamentally change how we think about the technology. So says Conor Grennan, Chief AI Architect at the NYU Stern School of Business and founder of the consulting company AI Mindset, who has studied the challenges that employees and organizations face in their AI journeys. He joins us to share insights about how making behavioral changes can help everyone get the most out of AI at work.

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Kevin Novak founded the AI-focused VC firm Rackhouse Ventures in 2021 after a decade of trailblazing leadership roles in data science. He works closely with the founders of the AI-native startups he backs, giving him a bird’s eye view of how they’re leveraging AI to reinvent business. He joined the WorkLab podcast to share some of his learnings, as well as insights about the promise of AI agents, how AI is transforming what we’ll be able to do with our data, and the perils of how we think about the future. 

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Microsoft Podcasts – Stay connected, informed, and entertained with original podcasts from Microsoft