MISRC Conference Tackles AI-Ready Future

How can organizations become truly "AI-ready?" That was the central challenge tackled at the Digital Leadership Conference, hosted by Minnesota Carlson's Management Information Systems Research Center (MISRC). The annual event brought industry leaders and top academic researchers together to explore what it means to be structurally and culturally prepared for AI at scale.

The first discussion paired Professor Ravi Bapna, the Curtis L. Carlson Chair Professor in Business Analytics and Information Systems, and Dr. Anjali Bhagra, Mayo Clinic physician lead and chair of enterprise automation. They explored how to maximize human wellbeing through effective human-AI collaboration. This was followed by a high-level leadership perspective from 3M CIO Mark Murphy, who outlined the practical steps required for enterprise-wide AI adoption.

The afternoon sessions drilled deeper into applications and challenges. Professor De Liu, the Xian Dong Eric Jing Professor of Information & Decision Sciences, and U.S. Bank’s Shub Agarwal, the senior vice president of AI product management, presented compelling use cases for agentic AI, showcasing how intelligent systems—a key part of the latest advances in generative AI—are moving from passive tools to active participants. The day culminated in an industry-spanning panel on the "Challenges of Being an AI-Ready Organization," featuring insights from Beth Tschida, CTO at Jamf, John Avenson, the senior vice president and CTO of the Minnesota Twins, and Erik Erickson, the chief data officer at Hennepin County, moderated by Information & Decision Sciences Professor Yuqing Ren.

“This conference serves as a unique confluence where industry leaders and world-class researchers unite to offer the latest insights on how AI is shaping our world,” said Information & Decision Sciences Associate Professor Soumya Sen, an organizer of the event and the academic director of MISRC. “That collaboration with the business community has always been central to the MISRC’s mission. We’re proud to carry that into the AI age.”

The MISRC Digital Leadership Conference was made possible thanks to the generous support of the following sponsors: General Mills, Carlson’s Information & Decision Sciences Department, Land O’Lakes Inc., Jamf, 3M, U.S. Bank, and Electro-Voice.