Audiobooks by Thomas H. Davenport

The New Science of Customer Relationships: Delivering the One-to-One Promise With AI

"The New Science of Customer Relationships: Delivering the One-to-One Promise with AI is a science-based and insightful new approach to integrating the latest generative AI technologies into your company's customer communications. Analytics and marketing experts Thomas Davenport and Jim Sterne walk you through the technology and tools you need to understand, the data you need to collect, the processes you need to implement, and the ethics you need to observe to build an industry-leading customer relationship framework. In the book, you'll learn to create systems that reliably generate smart, persuasive, and hyper-personalized interactions with your company's best customers. You'll also discover how to integrate these systems directly into your firm's existing operations so you can use the tools to realize tangible financial results. Inside the book: tips for using generative AI to analyze customer responses and extract actionable insights about how they feel and what they think; specific tools and technologies you can use to collect customer data and conduct effective analytics to improve your products and services; and discussions of ethical guidelines to guide your organization's data and customer communication practices."

Jim Sterne, Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Walter Dixon (Narrator)

Audiobook

Agentic Artificial Intelligence: Harnessing AI Agents to Reinvent Business, Work, and Life

"A practical, non-technical guide for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and curious minds. 'Agents are (…) bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons.' — Bill Gates 'AI agents will become the primary way we interact with computers in the future.” — Satya Nadella 'The age of agentic AI is here.' — Jensen Huang AI Agents—like Jarvis in Iron Man or Samantha in Her—are revolutionizing business and society. These intelligent systems can execute actions, learn from experience, and automate workflows with minimal supervision. Yet, behind the excitement lies a crucial gap between promise and reality. This book provides a clear, jargon-free roadmap to harnessing agentic AI for real-world impact. Drawing from hands-on implementation across global enterprises and startups, the authors reveal: - How to **identify high-value agentic opportunities** and build AI-driven solutions - The secrets behind **successful AI transformations**—cutting costs by 25%+ and boosting customer satisfaction by 40% - New business models in the **Agent Economy**—from automation to AI-powered startups - How to **avoid common AI pitfalls**—from integration challenges to user adoption - The **mindset & skills needed** to lead in an AI-powered world AI agents create 'compounding intelligence advantages'—the more they’re used, the smarter they become. Those who master AI agents today will define the next business era. Will you lead this transformation or be left behind? This book challenges you to shape AI’s future with purpose and integrity."

Brian Evergreen, David De Cremer, Jochen Wirtz, Nandan Mullakara, Pascal Bornet, Phil Fersht, Pooja Sund, Rakesh Gohel, Shail Khiyara, Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Rory Young (Narrator)

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All Hands on Tech: The AI-Powered Citizen Revolution

"Dive into a future of work where technology empowers everyone to be a creator and builder with All Hands on Tech. This pivotal book offers a comprehensive look into the role of citizen developers—business domain experts who are driving IT-enabled innovation using technology previously reserved for professional technologists. Through case studies of citizens and citizen-enabled enterprises, the authors demonstrate how emerging technology bestows unprecedented power on these individuals and unprecedented value on the organizations that channel their efforts. They outline a transformative approach to citizen development that not only enhances companies' innovative capacity via the empowerment of domain experts, but also minimizes risk and liberates IT departments to pursue more strategic initiatives. All Hands on Tech describes a revolution in work—powered by technology becoming more human and humans becoming more comfortable with technology. This convergence provides a clear pathway for enterprises to leverage the experience and insight of all employees. The authors provide diverse examples of companies that have aligned the work of their citizen developers with wider organizational goals across citizen data science, automation, and development projects. These examples demonstrate why and how to commit to the citizen revolution in your organization."

Ian Barkin, Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Brian Telestai (Narrator)

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HBR's 10 Must Reads 2017: The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review

"With authors from Clayton M. Christensen to Adam Grant and company examples from Intel to Uber, HBR's 10 Must Reads 2017 brings the most important management conversations to your fingertips. This book will inspire you to rethink the way you work in the face of advancing automation; transform your business using a platform strategy; apply design thinking to create innovative products; identify where too much collaboration may be holding your people back; see the theory of disruptive innovation in a brand new light; and recognize the signs that your cross-cultural negotiation may be falling apart. This collection of articles includes 'Collaborative Overload,' by Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant; 'Algorithms Need Managers, Too,' by Michael Luca, Jon Kleinberg, and Sendhil Mullainathan; 'Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy,' by Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Sangeet Paul Choudary; 'What Is Disruptive Innovation?,' by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael Raynor, and Rory McDonald; 'How Indra Nooyi Turned Design Thinking into Strategy,' an interview with Indra Nooyi by Adi Ignatius; 'Engineering Reverse Innovations,' by Amos Winter and Vijay Govindarajan; “The Employer-Led Health Care Revolution,' by Patricia A. McDonald, Robert S. Mecklenburg, and Lindsay A. Martin; and more."

Adam Grant, Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business Review, Thomas H. Davenport, Vijay Govindarajan (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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Working with AI: Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration (Management on the Cutting Edge)

"Two management and technology experts show that AI is not a job destroyer, exploring worker-AI collaboration in real-world work settings. This book breaks through both the hype and the doom-and-gloom surrounding automation and the deployment of artificial intelligence-enabled—“smart”—systems at work. Management and technology experts Thomas Davenport and Steven Miller show that, contrary to widespread predictions, prescriptions, and denunciations, AI is not primarily a job destroyer. Rather, AI changes the way we work—by taking over some tasks but not entire jobs, freeing people to do other, more important and more challenging work. By offering detailed, real-world case studies of AI-augmented jobs in settings that range from finance to the factory floor, Davenport and Miller also show that AI in the workplace is not the stuff of futuristic speculation. It is happening now to many companies and workers. These cases include a digital system for life insurance underwriting that analyzes applications and third-party data in real time, allowing human underwriters to focus on more complex cases; an intelligent telemedicine platform with a chat-based interface; a machine learning-system that identifies impending train maintenance issues by analyzing diesel fuel samples; and Flippy, a robotic assistant for fast food preparation. For each one, Davenport and Miller describe in detail the work context for the system, interviewing job incumbents, managers, and technology vendors. Short “insight” chapters draw out common themes and consider the implications of human collaboration with smart systems."

Steven M. Miller, Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Tim Andres Pabon (Narrator)

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Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines

"Nearly half of all working Americans could risk losing their jobs because of technology. It's not only blue-collar jobs at stake. Millions of educated knowledge workers are threatened by accelerating advances in artificial intelligence. The industrial revolution shifted workers from farms to factories. In the first era of automation, machines relieved humans of manually exhausting work. Today, Era Two of automation continues to wash across the entire services-based economy that has replaced jobs in agriculture and manufacturing. Era Three, and the rise of AI, is dawning. Smart computers are demonstrating they are capable of making better decisions than humans. Brilliant technologies can now decide, learn, predict, and even comprehend much faster and more accurately than the human brain, and their progress is accelerating. In Only Humans Need Apply, Thomas Hayes Davenport and Julia Kirby reframe the conversation about automation, arguing that the future of increased productivity and business success isn't either human or machine. It's both. The key is augmentation, utilizing technology to help humans work better, smarter, and faster. Instead of viewing these machines as competitive interlopers, we can see them as partners and collaborators in creative problem solving as we move into the next era."

Julia Kirby, Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Shawn Compton (Narrator)

Audiobook

HBR's 10 Must Reads on AI, Analytics, and the New Machine Age

"Machine learning and data analytics are powering a wave of groundbreaking technologies. Is your company ready? We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you understand how these technologies work together, how to adopt them, and why your strategy can't ignore them. In this book you'll learn how: data science, driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning, is yielding unprecedented business insights; blockchain has the potential to restructure the economy; drones and driverless vehicles are becoming essential tools; 3-D printing is making new business models possible; augmented reality is transforming retail and manufacturing; smart speakers are redefining the rules of marketing; and humans and machines are working together to reach new levels of productivity."

H. James Wilson, Harvard Business Review, Michael E. Porter, Paul R. Daugherty, Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Shawn Compton, Teri Schnaubelt (Narrator)

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Artificial Intelligence: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

"From making faster, better decisions to automating rote work to enabling robots to respond to emotions, AI and machine learning are already reshaping business and society. What should you and your company be doing today to ensure that you're poised for success and keeping up with your competitors in the age of AI? Artificial Intelligence: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review brings you today's most essential thinking on AI and explains how to launch the right initiatives at your company to capitalize on the opportunity of the machine intelligence revolution. Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues—blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more—each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas—and prepare you and your company for the future."

Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson, H. James Wilson, Harvard Business Review, Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Jonathan Todd Ross (Narrator)

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Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning

"This landmark work, the first to introduce business leaders to analytics, reveals how analytics are rewriting the rules of competition. Updated with fresh content, Competing on Analytics provides the road map for becoming an analytical competitor, showing readers how to create new strategies for their organizations based on sophisticated analytics. Introducing a five-stage model of analytical competition, Davenport and Harris describe the typical behaviors, capabilities, and challenges of each stage. They explain how to assess your company’s capabilities and guide it toward the highest level of competition. With equal emphasis on two key resources, human and technological, this book reveals how even the most highly analytical companies can up their game. With an emphasis on predictive, prescriptive, and autonomous analytics for marketing, supply chain, finance, M&A, operations, R&D, and HR, the book contains numerous new examples from different industries and business functions, such as Disney’s vacation experience, Google’s HR, UPS’s logistics, the Chicago Cubs’ training methods, and Firewire Surfboards’ customization. Additional new topics and research include: Data scientists and what they do; Big data and the changes it has wrought; Hadoop and other open-source software for managing and analyzing data; Data products—new products and services based on data and analytics; Machine learning and other AI technologies; The Internet of Things and its implications; New computing architectures, including cloud computing; Embedding analytics within operational systems; and Visual analytics. The business classic that turned a generation of leaders into analytical competitors, Competing on Analytics is the definitive guide for transforming your company’s fortunes in the age of analytics and big data."

Jeanne G. Harris, Thomas H. Davenport (Author), L.J. Ganser (Narrator)

Audiobook

Big Data at Work: Dispelling the Myths, Uncovering the Opportunities

"Go ahead, be skeptical about big data. The author was-at first. When the term 'big data' first came on the scene, bestselling author Tom Davenport (Competing on Analytics, Analytics at Work) thought it was just another example of technology hype. But his research in the years that followed changed his mind. Now, in clear, conversational language, Davenport explains what big data means-and why everyone in business needs to know about it. Big Data at Work covers all the bases: what big data means from a technical, consumer, and management perspective; what its opportunities and costs are; where it can have real business impact; and which aspects of this hot topic have been oversold. This book will help you understand: Why big data is important to you and your organization; What technology you need to manage it; How big data could change your job, your company, and your industry; How to hire, rent, or develop the kinds of people who make big data work; The key success factors in implementing any big data project; How big data is leading to a new approach to managing analytics. With dozens of company examples, including UPS, GE, Amazon, United Healthcare, Citigroup, and many others, this book will help you seize all opportunities-from improving decisions, products, and services to strengthening customer relationships. It will show you how to put big data to work in your own organization so that you too can harness the power of this ever-evolving new resource."

Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

Audiobook

Judgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them Right

"Your guide to making better decisions Despite the dizzying amount of data at our disposal today—and an increasing reliance on analytics to make the majority of our decisions—many of our most critical choices still come down to human judgment. This fact is fundamental to organizations whose leaders must often make crucial decisions: to do this they need the best available insights. In Judgment Calls, authors Tom Davenport and Brook Manville share twelve stories of organizations that have successfully tapped their data assets, diverse perspectives, and deep knowledge to build an organizational decision-making capability—a competence they say can make the difference between success and failure. This book introduces a model that taps the collective judgment of an organization so that the right decisions are made, and the entire organization profits. Through the stories in Judgment Calls, the authors—both of them seasoned management thinkers and advisers—make the case for the wisdom of organizations and suggest ways to use it to best advantage. Each chapter tells a unique story of one dilemma and its ultimate resolution, bringing into high relief one key to the power of collective judgment. Individually, these stories inspire and instruct; together, they form a model for building an organizational capacity for broadly based, knowledge-intensive decision making. You’ve read The Wisdom of Crowds and Competing on Analytics. Now listen to Judgment Calls. You, and your organization, will make better decisions."

Brook Manville, Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Don Hagen (Narrator)

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Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers

"Maximize Your Most Critical Asset. THE GUIDE NO MANAGER CAN AFFORD TO BE WITHOUT! Knowledge workers are the innovators, designers and marketers of your company's products and services. They are the highly paid strategists, executives, and IT specialists whose ideas and expertise fuel your success. But are they delivering their best performance? Leading knowledge-management and process-innovation expert Thomas Davenport shows you how to: Identify your company's most crucial category of knowledge worker; Choose appropriate interventions and performance measures; Use computers to mediate and structure knowledge work; Select the most effective technology; Understand the value of social networks and facilitate their use; and Structure the physical environment to maximize productivity. Thomas Davenport holds the President's Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He is the director of research for Babson Executive Education, an Accenture Fellow, and the author, coauthor, or editor of nine books, including Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know."

Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Thomas H. Davenport (Narrator)

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