The Mathematical Corporation, Josh Sullivan
The Mathematical Corporation, Josh Sullivan
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The Mathematical Corporation
Where Machine Intelligence and Human Ingenuity Achieve the Impossible

Author: Josh Sullivan, Angela Zutavern

Narrator: Fleet Cooper

Unabridged: 9 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 06/06/2017

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

The most powerful weapon in business today is the alliance between the mathematical smarts of machines and the imaginative human intellect of great leaders. Together they make the mathematical corporation, the business model of the future.

We are at a once-in-a-decade breaking point similar to the quality revolution of the 1980s and the dawn of the internet age in the 1990s: leaders must transform how they run their organizations, or competitors will bring them crashing to earth -- often overnight.

Mathematical corporations -- the organizations that will master the future -- will outcompete high-flying rivals by merging the best of human ingenuity with machine intelligence. While smart machines are weapon number one for organizations, leaders are still the drivers of breakthroughs. Only they can ask crucial questions to capitalize on business opportunities newly discovered in oceans of data.

This dynamic combination will make possible the fulfillment of missions that once seemed out of reach, even impossible to attain. Josh Sullivan and Angela Zutavern's extraordinary examples include the entrepreneur who upended preventive health care, the oceanographer who transformed fisheries management, and the pharmaceutical company that used algorithm-driven optimization to boost vaccine yields.

Together they offer a profoundly optimistic vision for a dazzling new phase in business, and a playbook for how smart companies can manage the essential combination of human and machine.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nick on July 15, 2017

First the authors clearly have drank the kool-aide. However, the book is a strong guide for the leader of a enterprise that depends on data. Part of the point is that nearly every corporation should be looking at the data that is available to them and how it can move the firm forward. Most valuable......more

Goodreads review by Matt on November 12, 2018

This is a very buzzword, business-speak look at "machine intelligence." There are many anecdotes, but I felt it was lacking in specifics/details. This is a peak inside the buzz-cycle. If you are already over the big data, data science, machine learning, then you need this book. Big data is now the d......more

Goodreads review by KT on December 10, 2017

I got this book as a freebie at work. It was the first (and only) book I've read on this topic so some parts may be totally obvious and cliched to people who actually follow the subject closely. However, it was an adequate introduction. The chapter on data ownership and ethics was surprisingly quite......more

Goodreads review by Nilesh on November 14, 2017

With AI, Big Data, Machine Learning and other technologies, the way we decide has changed. And, this is definitely true at the organization level, as the book forcefully and rightly points out. Historically, decision making was deductive. Without much data and analysis, perceptive were leaders who co......more

Goodreads review by Jamie on April 10, 2021

Interesting use cases to some degree. I would view this as introductory to ML/AI and not something to propel you forward if you have even a base level understanding of the distinction between machines and humans and the types of problems they can solve. If you already understand a supervised learnin......more


Quotes

"Shrewd corporate executives are realigning their organizations to harness the burgeoning power of cyberintelligence. ... Nonetheless, both corporate executives and government leaders still need inquisitive and creative humans ... A lucid overview of the management principles rapidly moving that world forward."—Booklist (starred review)

"Much has been written recently about the ability to reach better decisions by application of big data. However, Josh Sullivan and Angela Zutavern take us a step beyond by introducing The Mathematical Corporation. Leaders of mathematical corporations combine data analytics with the mathematical intelligence of machines and their own creativity to enhance the quality of current and future decisions. A must read for leaders striving to stay contemporary in a rapidly evolving world."—Larry Bossidy, retired chairman and CEO of Honeywell, co-author of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done and Confronting Reality

"In this interesting and accessible book, Sullivan and Zutavern challenge us to reconsider assumptions about machines 'taking over,' relegating the human factor to a bygone era. Their hopeful alternative scenario for the future instead clearly shows the importance of leaders and employees who work creatively in symbiosis with machines to achieve greater productivity, better innovation and higher profits."—Amy Webb, founder and CEO of the Future Today Institute and author of The Signals are Talking

"Josh Sullivan and Angela Zutavern offer a riveting account of the explosive new combination of machine intelligence and executive imagination. Company managers are solving stubborn problems as never before in areas as diverse as health, mobility and security, and The Mathematical Corporation is a compelling call for the digital mastery of market complexity-now."—Michael Useem, professor of management, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of Fortune Makers: The Leaders Creating China's Great Global Companies