Article

San Murugesan

Cutter Expert San Murugesan provides a comprehensive overview of how AI is transforming agriculture on a global scale. His piece delves into a wide range of AI applications, from precision agriculture and automated irrigation to crop monitoring, robotics, and market forecasting. It showcases the potential of AI to not only increase yields and optimize resource use but to reduce waste, minimize environmental impact, and enhance farmers’ livelihoods. Murugesan emphasizes the need for a multi-stakeholder approach, calling for increased investment in R&D, the creation of supportive policies, and targeted efforts to address the barriers to AI adoption, including high implementation costs, data privacy concerns, and the digital divide.

Article

Kasuni Vidanagamachchi, Athula Ginige, Dilupa Nakandala

Kasuni Vidanagamachchi, Dilupa Nakandala, and Athula Ginige examine the vulnerabilities of agri-food supply chains (ASCs), drawing on lessons learned from adaptations made during the pandemic. They posit that long-term viability, rather than short-term resilience, is essential for these systems to withstand prolonged crises. The article highlights the importance of diversifying food supply methods, incorporating local production, community-based sharing, and digital technologies to enhance adaptability and responsiveness to disruptions. Through a case study from Sri Lanka, they demonstrate how a combination of government support, community engagement, and digital innovation enabled effective adaptation during the pandemic.

Article

Vijaya Lakshmi, Jacqueline Corbett

Successfully integrating AI into agriculture requires a nuanced understanding of the social, cultural, and ecological contexts in which it is deployed. Vijaya Lakshmi and Jacqueline Corbett explore this concept, arguing that a conjoint-learning approach (one that combines the precision of AI with the rich tapestry of traditional agricultural knowledge) holds the key to unlocking truly sustainable solutions. Their article presents three case studies from India, each showcasing how farmers are blending generations-old practices with AI-powered tools to enhance decision-making, optimize resource use, and adapt to changing conditions.

Article

Philip Webster, Habib Hussein, Kajetan Widomski, Jonathan Jeyaratnam, Ruth Bastow, Mark Matthews

Philip Webster, Habib Hussein, Kajetan Widomski, and Jonathan Jeyaratnam of Arthur D. Little together with Ruth Bastow and Mark Matthews of the UK Agri-Tech Centre introduce AI as a powerful tool capable of assisting farmers in making informed decisions about adopting new technologies and practices. The authors acknowledge the complexity of farming systems and the difficulty in identifying appropriate solutions amid a rapidly evolving technological landscape. They propose a use case–driven approach, using AI tools to analyze a range of factors, such as market trends, climate data, regulatory environments, and farm-specific variables, to recommend the most suitable innovations.

Article

Athula Ginige

This issue of Amplify explores the complex relationship between climate change and agriculture, highlighting the urgent need for innovative solutions to ensure food security and sustainable farming practices. We take readers on a journey from the frontlines of climate change’s impact on smallholder farmers to the potential of AI and data-driven technologies to transform the entire pathway across the agri-food supply chain.

Article

Santosh Kumari, Athula Ginige, Sanju Saharan

Santosh Kumari, Athula Ginige, and Sanju Saharan shed light on the challenges faced by farmers in Haryana, India, a region heavily reliant on agriculture. Farmers are witnessing firsthand the effects of climate change — from shifting monsoon patterns and increased heat waves to water scarcity and soil degradation. The article emphasizes that these farmers are not passive victims; they are actively adapting by modifying planting schedules, experimenting with climate-resilient crops, and drawing on generations of traditional knowledge. They make it clear that existing adaptation strategies may not be enough to address the scale of the challenge. Some even augment the factors leading to climate change, underscoring the need for systemic solutions.

Advisor

Curt Hall

As this Advisor explores, GenAI looks promising for providing advanced AI edge computing capabilities in space. Although still in experimental stages, applications from Booz Allen Hamilton and the European Space Agency demonstrate the possibilities of integrating GenAI capabilities directly on spacecraft by facilitating natural language–based data retrieval and analysis, improved data transmission efficiency, and real-time decision-making.

Advisor

Ralph Menzano

Airports can be viewed as microcosms of cities and, as such, offer important lessons to public sector entities around the world. Specifically, emulating the strategies used by airports during the pandemic can help municipalities and others become more resilient. In this Advisor, Denver International Airport CEO Phillip Washington offers a firsthand view into how airports were able to survive, rebound, and move forward after the pandemic-induced downturn.

Advisor

Senthil Kumar Sundaramoorthy, Dipti Kamath, Sachin Nimbalkar, Christopher Price, Thomas Wenning, Joe Cresko

In this Advisor, a group from Oak Ridge National Laboratory explores energy-efficiency improvement as a feasible, low-cost approach that can bring immediate industrial CO2 emissions reductions around the globe.

Advisor

Ryan Abbott, Elizabeth Rothman

As AI systems advance and produce increasingly sophisticated and innovative output, the question of how to treat this output under IP law becomes more pressing. The characteristics of some AI systems, including the self-improving nature of certain AI models and the difficulties associated with attributing their outputs to human creators, challenge the existing framework and necessitate a thorough rethinking of what rules will result in the greatest social value.

Advisor

Linda Patterson

Women of color are equipped with tried-by-fire strengths that stem from endurance, perseverance, and survivorship. By utilizing these qualities, businesses can expand and grow to meet the diverse needs of their customer base.

Advisor

Moriba Jah

Transitioning from a linear to a circular space economy is not just about sustainability — it’s about preventing orbital ecocide and ensuring the long-term viability of orbital space as a resource and habitat. By embracing resource efficiency, reuse, and innovation, we can safeguard the celestial environment and preserve the final frontier for future generations.

Article

Denis Dennehy

In this issue of Amplify, we delve into the ways organizations are developing analytical capabilities that lead to valuable insights and create business value. We also explore the shift from being a data-driven organization to a data-centric one. The latter places data science at its core; data is a primary, permanent asset used as the starting point to determine organizational action. As we explore this shift, it becomes evident that organizations that exploit analytics (and data in general) tend to view it as more than a means to an end — they harness it to create a data-centric culture, establish synergies within and across functions, and deepen relationships with myriad stakeholders.

Article

Bill Schmarzo

Bill Schmarzo opens the issue with a thought-provoking article about how companies can unleash business value and economic innovation through AI. Drawing on the seminal work of Adam Smith, Schmarzo explains that “the essence of economics is the creation, consumption, and distribution of wealth — or value” as a baseline for economic innovation. The author brilliantly balances his extensive industry experience and published works to highlight cultural empowerment as a way to foster an inclusive environment to demonstrate value. He identifies 10 critical characteristics of cultural empowerment in the context of leveraging AI and generative AI (GenAI) for economic innovation. Schmarzo also offers the “Thinking Like a Data Scientist” methodology to help business leaders maximize AI to create new sources of customer, product, service, and operational value. The article concludes with an example of integrating GenAI with the methodology to create an economic innovation force multiplier.

Article

Hossein Sahraei, Ramila Peiris, Luc Nguyen, Olivier Moureau

Hossein Sahraei, Ramila Peiris, Luc Nguyen, and Olivier Moureau describe how global healthcare company Sanofi transitioned from reactive modes of data analytics (descriptive, diagnostic) to a proactive approach through prescriptive analytics. The authors, who are part of Sanofi's process data science team, provide a refreshing account of their experiences, challenges, and successes, beginning with an acknowledgment that digital transformation goes beyond adopting new technologies to fundamentally change how organizations operate, think, and innovate. They highlight the importance of developing a growth mindset, challenging established norms, and seeing uncertainty as a catalyst for innovation. The authors also explain how the organizational strategy prioritized practicality (an approach based on business needs and limitations), scalability (a framework that can be used in different areas with minimal effort), and sustainability (manageable execution, maintenance, and updates) in product design and deployment. The article reports on the economic value of empowering decision makers, along with benefits such as increased job satisfaction and helping workers maintain a healthy work-life balance.

Advisor

Victor Heaulme

This Advisor explores key technologies for more accurate tracking of space objects of all sizes, monitoring software that automates collision warnings, and technology that remotely removes objects in orbit. These include two systems that cause decaying orbits, one that uses a specialized satellite to push space objects and one that moves objects into a different orbit from Earth.

Article

Daniel Rees, Roderick Thomas, Victoria Bates, Gareth Davies

Daniel J. Rees, Roderick A. Thomas, Victoria Bates, and Gareth Davies examine the transformational impact that healthcare-related technologies (e.g., AI, wearable sensors, clinical and genetic data) have on the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. These technologies can potentially transform healthcare business processes, resulting in faster, more efficient decision-making, human-error reduction, and accelerated product development cycles that can lead to faster product launches. The authors gained insights from 48 senior managers in healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations to both identify best practices and understand the challenges related to using healthcare-related technologies and data-centric decision-making to deliver value to stakeholders. Best practices, such as governance (memorandum of understanding), incentives (monetary and nonmonetary), scalability, and collaboration between pharmaceutical makers and technology companies, are identified as key enablers. Such practices enable stakeholders to mitigate challenges like culture (trust, reputation, time, risk aversion), governance (contracts), and scalability. The article concludes with recommendations to ensure the right individuals choose tools and processes that can lead to successful partnerships and transformational initiatives for the benefit of patients, society, and the wider economy.

Article

Antoine Harfouche

Antoine Harfouche explains how AI and big data analytics enable smart farming, focusing on the hydroponic forage market. With a current market value of more than US $5 billion, hydroponic systems that leverage technologies like AI, Internet of Things, satellite imagery, and data analytics can optimize environmental controls, improve resource management, and enhance crop resilience. He also outlines the advantages and disadvantages of several such technologies. By combining data, including genomic (epigenomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics), phenomic (plant height, leaf shape, angle, growth trajectory), and environmental (weather and soil, solar radiation, relative humidity), AI can enhance predictive accuracy and decision-making in breeding programs to enhance climate resilience. Harfouche explains the importance of the data value chain, which consists of data capture, data storage, data transformation, data analysis, data interpretation, and feedback. These stages are then instantiated into a framework to demonstrate how AI and big data analytics can be used to improve hydroponic cultivation and improve the sustainability of hydroponic farming. The article concludes with a call for increased collaboration among researchers, farmers, and policy makers to harness these technologies to create a sustainable and secure food production system for the future.

Article

Enjoud Alhasawi, Denis Dennehy, Yogesh Dwivedi, Guoqing Zhao, Sean Coffey

Enjoud Alhasawi, Denis Dennehy, Yogesh Dwivedi, Guoqing Zhao, and Sean Coffey highlight a growing concern about how supply chain disruptions negatively impact both developed and developing countries. The authors provide insights from practitioners at four companies located in Ireland and Kuwait that operate in large, complex agri-food supply chains. They focus on understanding how AI enables resilience in agri-food supply chains. Building on the four dimensions of supply chain resilience (readiness, responsiveness, recovery, and adaptability), the authors show how the companies used robotics and expert systems to mitigate the threat of supply chain disruptions. Drawing on secondary data, they acknowledge that other functions of AI (machine learning, machine vision, natural language processing, and speech recognition) can be applied to various elements of the supply chain, including forecasting, optimization of processes, supplier selection, automation, and decision support for configuration, design, and planning. Anticipating that future supply chain disruptions will threaten the global agri-food sector, the authors call for concerted efforts between industry, the public sector, and academic researchers to build more resilient supply chains.

Advisor

Oana Branzei, Dusya Vera, Kimberley Young Milani

Through a recent executive leadership roundtable, we learned that top leaders tend to construct their ESG strategies through three lenses (or frames): Games (with referees and rules), Positions (with some being deciders and some doers), or Capitals (with money overpowering other capitals). In short, as this Advisor explains, ESG strategies are neither given nor static. Rather, they evolve depending on the character dimensions of the leaders who envision and enact them.