Key information
Programme overview
A 5-day immersive programme for leaders navigating the age of intelligent systems
Transforming Business with AI’ is a 5-day immersive programme designed to empower you to lead confidently in the age of intelligent systems.
Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how organisations create value, deliver services, and compete. Generative AI and Agentic AI systems are redefining what businesses can automate, augment, and reimagine. Leaders now face an urgent question: how do we move beyond transcend experimentation and translate utilise intelligent technologies into for meaningful, organisation-wide powerful transformation?
Transforming Business with AI is a flagship programme designed for leaders who need to understand AI deeply enough to make confident strategic choices. You will explore the technological frontier, identify high-value opportunities, build viable AI-enabled business cases, and mobilise the organisational networks required to implement them.
Grounded in Imperial’s research on intelligent systems and innovation management, the programme moves far beyond typical high-level introductions to AI. You work hands-on with emerging technologies, apply frameworks for transformation under uncertainty, and build the strategic and behavioural capabilities required to lead in an AI-enabled world.
Who should attend?
- Transforming Business with AI is designed for senior leaders and decision makers who:
- Lead innovation, strategy, transformation, operations, or digital functions
- Are responsible for identifying AI opportunities and building business cases
- Need to understand how intelligent systems reshape business models and workflows
- Must mobilise complex organisations to implement new technologies
- Operate in sectors undergoing technological disruption and acceleration: finance, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, consulting, technology, consumer goods, public sector and more.
Learning objectives
Throughout our programme on transforming business with AI, you will develop the skills and capabilities to:
- Explain the core concepts and capabilities of cutting-edge intelligent systems, including Generative AI and Agentic AI, and identify possible applications.
- Apply strategic frameworks to identify, prioritise, and design AI-enabled innovation opportunities
- Develop a transformation plan that translates technological insight into actionable business strategy, including stakeholder engagement, implementation steps, and measurable outcomes.
- Engage in peer-to-peer learning and collaborate with faculty experts to critically analyse innovation challenges from diverse industry perspectives.
Learning Journey
Transforming Business with AI is a five-day immersive experience structured around faculty-led sessions, interactive workshops, simulations, and hands-on engagement with intelligent technologies.
Across the week, you progress through the Inspire → Integrate → Influence network framework, developing the strategic, technological, and behavioural capabilities required to lead AI-enabled transformation.
The week begins with a strong foundation in Generative AI, Agentic AI, and intelligent systems, exploring how these technologies are reshaping business models, workflows, and organisational design. You then learn how to identify opportunities for AI-enabled innovation through catalytic networks and vision advantage. As the week progresses, you apply scenario-based tools to develop viable business cases for AI initiatives under different levels of technological and demand uncertainty.
The programme then turns to the human dynamics of change—cross-functional collaboration, dual networking, and influence networks—and how these shape the success of innovation initiatives. You conclude the week by presenting your AI-enabled proposal, refined through expert feedback and informed by real-world industry insight.
The core themes of our programme include:
- AI systems fundamentals: Generative AI, Agentic AI, and intelligent systems; model constraints, advanced prompting, RAG concepts, workflow automation
- Network-based opportunity identification and catalytic innovation
- Scenario-based approaches for designing AI-enabled business cases
- Cross-functional collaboration and dual networking
- Influence networks and leadership for AI-enabled transformation
Programme agenda
AI Systems Fundamentals & Opportunity Identification
Acquire a foundational understanding of Generative AI, Agentic AI, and intelligent systems, including how large models reason, retrieve information, and operate within their constraints. Explore context windows, memory limits, and multi-agent workflows, and understand where these systems excel and where they fail.
You will then begin identifying areas of opportunity by mapping how intelligent systems could reshape your organisation’s processes, decision-making, and value creation.
Sessions on day one will include:
- Welcome and introduction
- Fundamentals of Generative AI, Agentic AI, multi-agent systems
- Hands-on workshops using LLM based tools (such as ChatGPT and Perplexity) and agent building (CHECK WITH ISLEM)
- Exposure to architectural components (e.g., LLMs, RAG, agents) at a non-code level
- Model constraints: context windows, memory boundaries, retrieval behaviour
- Introduction to workflow automation and agentic orchestration
- Divergent thinking for identifying areas of opportunity
- Workshop: Defining your organisational challenge
Catalytic Networks & Opportunity Discovery
Explore how opportunities for AI-enabled innovation arise not from isolated analysis, but from catalytic networks. Learn how to identify high-value opportunities using network science, vision advantage, and cross-boundary idea exchanges. Map your innovation network and understand how your position shapes your ability to generate novel, AI-driven solutions.
Sessions on day two will include:
- Networks as catalysts for innovation
- Vision advantage and identifying novel opportunities
- Mapping your catalytic network
- Opportunity framing for AI-enabled innovation
- Workshop: Building your initial business concept statement
Business Case Development & Cross-Silo Integration
Delve into how organisations integrate AI within different contexts of uncertainty and how this influences the design of business cases, KPIs, and implementation pathways. Explore cross-silo collaboration and develop your AI business case.
Sessions on day three will include:
- Scenario-based frameworks for AI implementation
- Business model design under uncertainty
- Collaboration across silos
- Developing KPIs for AI-enabled initiatives
- Workshop: Drafting your AI business case
Mobilising Influence & Scaling AI Initiatives
Understand why AI transformation is not just technical — it is organisational. Learn how dual networking, influence networks, and cross-functional alignment enable intelligent systems to be adopted effectively. Participate in a simulation to practise mobilising stakeholders and navigating resistance. Refine your implementation plan based on technical, behavioural, and structural considerations.
Sessions on day four will include:
- Influence networks in AI-enabled transformation
- Simulation: Leading transformation across stakeholders
- Industry insight: Designing and scaling digital ventures
- Workshop: Building your influence and implementation plan
Pitch, Review & Commit to Action
Bring your learning journey to life by presenting your AI-enabled business plan. Receive feedback from faculty and peers, refine your implementation strategy, and reflect on the leadership capabilities needed to spearhead AI-enabled transformation within your organisation.
Sessions on day five will include:
- Industry panel discussion
- Participant presentations
- Peer and faculty feedback
- Reflection and next steps
Programme faculty and experts
Transforming Business with AI is enriched by insights from Imperial world-leading faculty and industry experts who will expose you to the new evidence-based approaches to innovation and scaling AI initiatives.
Bart Clarysse
Bart holds the Chair in Entrepreneurship at ETH Zürich, where he is a full-time professor and visits Imperial College Business School to teach "corporate entrepreneurship and innovation" in its executive MBA and various open and customised executive programmes. Before ETH, he was a full Professor of Entrepreneurship at Imperial College. He is a founder of several high-tech start-ups in businesses such as digital cinema, mobile internet and venture incubation.
Bart was an advisor in technology policy at the European Commission and he still consults on innovation and technology matters for various European governments and agencies. He has over 50 publications in the field of high tech start-ups and managing growth of these companies and has been an executive teacher for several corporates such as KLM, Belgacom, Panasonic, EDF, BP, BT, Finmechanicca and Leo Pharma in corporate venturing and innovative turnaround strategies.
Bart's authored a best-selling book, The Smart Entrepreneur: How to Build for a Successful Business with Sabrina Kiefer
Chris Tucci
Chris Tucci is Professor of Digital Strategy & Innovation and received the degrees of Ph.D. in Management from the Sloan School of Management, MIT; SM (Technology & Policy) from MIT; and BS (Mathematical Sciences), AB (Music), and MS (Computer Science) from Stanford University. He was an industrial computer scientist involved in developing Internet protocols and applying artificial intelligence tools. Professor Tucci’s primary area of interest is in how firms make transitions to new business models, technologies, and organisational forms
Anne ter Wal
Anne ter Wal is Professor of Technology and Innovation Management in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship.
His research, often in collaboration with leading multinational companies as well as start-ups, focuses on the role of networks in innovation and entrepreneurship. Specifically, Anne studies how individuals access new knowledge and ideas through networks within and between organizations and the challenges they face when seeking to apply these ideas to the creation of novel products and services. He leads a large-scale EU-funded research project titled "Networking for Innovation", studying how networking enables entrepreneurs and innovators to build valuable networks that help them achieve business and innovation success. He also has an interest in the management of creativity, in particular in the role of bootlegging and other deviant forms of creativity in driving innovative outcomes
Key information
Contact us
José Rosario
Director of Business Development - Open Programmes