AI for Business Leaders, Step by Step for 2027

Make sound decisions about AI without being a technical expert: find the use cases worth pursuing, build an honest business case, manage the risks and scale what works.

Who it's for

Directors, senior managers, founders, board members and their advisers who must make decisions about artificial intelligence without being technical experts. The book names no AI products or models, because they change quickly; it concentrates on the questions leaders must ask.

What you'll learn

• Tell the main families of AI apart and recognise the five jobs AI does well: predict, generate, summarise and extract, converse and act
• Run a discovery workshop that starts from real problems, and capture every idea on a use case card you can compare
• Score use cases on value and feasibility, and balance a portfolio of quick wins, strategic bets and fill-ins
• Choose a level of ambition (use, embed or transform) and write a one-page AI strategy that says what you will and will not do
• Compare build, buy and partner options, check data and knowledge readiness, and write a business case that counts the full cost, including human oversight
• Place each use case in a risk tier with minimum controls, and set principles, decision rights and review forums in a governance charter
• Run pilots as business experiments, assess how AI changes each role, build AI literacy and choose an operating model for scaling

What's inside

• 87 pages, 12 chapters
• Each chapter gives you key concepts, a step-by-step method, an illustrative example from a fictional UK organisation, a ready-to-use tool, common mistakes, a recap of the key steps and a short exercise to try this week
• Worked examples from fictional UK organisations, including an accountancy practice, a district council and an insurer
• A tool in every chapter, including the AI use case card, prioritisation scorecard, AI strategy on a page, risk tiering assessment, governance charter and AI value dashboard
• A 30-60-90 day action plan for the leadership team, a minimum governance checklist and a glossary
• General pointers on UK data protection and the regulatory picture, with a reminder to check current guidance and take legal advice
• PDF in A4 format — read on screen or print
• Instant download after purchase

Contents

1. What AI Can and Cannot Do
2. Finding High-Value Use Cases
3. Prioritising Your AI Portfolio
4. Setting an AI Strategy That Fits Your Business
5. Build, Buy or Partner
6. Getting Your Data and Knowledge Ready
7. Building the Business Case for AI
8. Managing the Risks of AI
9. Governing AI Responsibly
10. Running Pilots That Prove Value
11. Leading People Through AI Change
12. Scaling AI Across the Organisation

Part of The Business Library

This title is one of the 55 ebooks in The Business Library, available together for £109 (worth £1,437 if bought separately: the total of the individual prices of the included titles in our store). It is also included in The Ultimate Business Bundle, which adds 8 checklists and toolkits and 10 workbooks — all 73 products for £147.