Fusion Strategy: The $75 Trillion Industrial AI Opportunity | Venkat Venkatraman

What if the companies that think AI is someone else's problem are about to lose their most valuable competitive ground? Professor Venkat Venkatraman from Boston University's Questrom School of Business is the co-author of *Fusion Strategy* (Harvard Business Review Press) and one of the world's leading authorities on how legacy industrial firms use real-time data networks and AI to reinvent their business models. In this episode, Mark and Venkat explore: - Why roughly $75 trillion of the global economy has yet to be systematically digitised — and why that is the most significant business opportunity of the next decade - The difference between digital paint and digital structure: how to know whether your organisation is adding AI at the periphery or redesigning around intelligence at the core - What datagraphs are, why they matter more than systems of record, and how industrial companies can unlock the same network effects that drove Netflix, Amazon and Spotify - Why the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to an AI researcher — and what that tells us about the fusion of traditional industries with data and intelligence - The ecosystem shift from economies of scale to economies of expertise — and why a mid-sized chemicals or food ingredients company may be better placed than it thinks - What a CEO should actually do in the next 90 days to prepare for the intelligence age without simply automating the past Connect with Venkat Venkatraman: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/venkatraman/ *Fusion Strategy*: available now from Harvard Business Review Press *Agentic Intelligence: Strategy at the Speed of Data* — exploring how humans and machines can work together to create intelligence. Published 15 September 2026. Connect with Arkaro: 🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn: Arkaro Company Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/arkaro Mark Blackwell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrblackwell/ Newsletter - Arkaro Insights: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/arkaro-insights-6924308904973631488/ 🌐 Visit our website: www.arkaro.com 📺 Subscribe to our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@arkaro Audio Podcast: https://arkaroinsights.buzzsprout.com 📧 For business enquiries: mark@arkaro.com