AI for Business Programme: A Transformational Learning Experience

Benedetto Conversano is Group Chief Information Officer at Diageo, one of the world’s foremost alcoholic beverage multinationals and a major distributor of Scotch whiskey. Over the span of his career, he has held a slew of senior executive and non-executive board member roles at leading organisations, including Avon, Ikea and P&G—a varied and demanding professional trajectory that has seen him adapt and fortify his knowledge and leadership capabilities proactively and with great agility. One area of change and innovation that runs transversely across all of the industries and sectors where Benedetto has expertise is digital transformation; and specifically, AI. 

AI more perhaps than any other disruption, has the potential to reshape the business landscape, he says. And for this reason, he resolved in 2024 to join the INSEAD AI for Business programme and accelerate his understanding of both the technology and its extraordinary promise for organisations. 

“I believe AI is here to stay, and to fundamentally change the way we’ll do business. As a business executive, I have the responsibility to understand how I can lead this change in the most beneficial way for both my organization and my people. Failing to take this responsibility means to inexorably pay the consequences of the choices made by others. I found that the AI for Business program at INSEAD had the right content for a person with my profile and job role, balancing both technical content and business implications.”

A wealth of wow moments

Coming into the programme, Benedetto was confident that INSEAD would deliver the comprehensive learning journey that he wanted. That said, he was unprepared for the moments of astonishing discovery—the “wow moments,” he says—that characterised the experience. Every day, he recalls, there was a pivotal learning and a critical insight into AI and its applications; moments where the “penny dropped,” and new understanding and possibility would surface.

“The first time I felt the penny really drop was right at the start of the programme, when our professors took us deep into the very essence of Deep Learning: how this technology actually works. The way that faculty were able to explain such a complex topic and make it digestible was so commendable,” says Benedetto. “Then another standout wow moment for me was when we started to use the AI concept to generate a new business model. This showcased a completely new dimension to the opportunities that the technology offers.” 

The blend of theory and applied learning, peer discussion, teamwork and hands-on assignments brought to the fore the depth of impact that AI technologies are poised on the work of executives, employees and organisations, he says. Meanwhile, the class dynamic lent the experience another dimension that we found “very powerful.”'

“It’s a blend of concepts and an interchange of perspective and ideas, coupled with group work that makes it so effective. Faculty are very open-minded and lead the learning really well. And I also appreciated the diversity as well as the high calibre and profiles of my peers, which helped make the programme an ideal setting to learn and develop new ways of thinking.”

A transformational technology, a transformational learning experience 

Coming out of the learning experience, Benedetto says that he has been able to translate new knowledge and understanding into meaningful, real-world impact within his organisation. A key outcome has been accelerating the development of a strong AI strategy for his company, while simultaneously driving the implementation of ChatGPT as a corporate tool. Elsewhere, he has redoubled his commitment to “evangelise” the adoption of basic AI capabilities across the organisation, launching education and awareness initiatives at every level of hierarchy and function. Business cases are being trialled too. 

“Thanks to the INSEAD programme, I realised that simply adopting ChatGPT in our business processes is a tremendous understatement of what the technology can do. To me, one of the main technology insights from the course is the sheer heterogeneity of areas and approaches that are available to organisations that want to deploy GenAI,” says Benedetto. “I also gained a lot of value in learning about the multitude of AI services already available out there and ready to use. From the business perspective, the impact on my organisation is the most powerful. Again, it’s about going much beyond the superficial myth that ‘GenAI will replace my job’ but rather understanding how GenAI will transform organisations and processes and how this can play out.”

This, says Benedetto, extends from the initiatives that he and his organisation are already rolling out, to diverse and focused areas of the business. Recruitment, he says, is a space ripe for transformation with the streamlining and matching of job profiles with resumes poised to yield huge gains in terms of efficiencies and productivity. Another area he sees as potentially valuable is AI’s capacity to analyse and map out qualitative results from large surveys and data sets: something that could be “very powerful” as deeper integration gathers pace. 

AI for Business has opened Benedetto’s eyes to a universe of possibilities and opportunities and marked an inflection point in his personal professional development. 

“This has been by far the best executive education programme I have attended in my entire business life, and I am sure it will shape the rest of my career. Super well invested time and effort. My advice is to attend this course as soon as possible.”