Turning AI Into Measurable Value Across Business Operations

Description

Artificial intelligence has moved from boardroom conversation to operational expectation — and the people responsible for driving value across PE-backed companies are now on the hook for making it work. The real challenge isn't adoption. It's knowing which initiatives actually move EBITDA, which portfolio companies are ready, and how to build momentum without losing years to the wrong bets. And increasingly, the conversation is turning to a less visible but consequential challenge: the structural gap between value that gets negotiated and value that actually gets captured — a gap that lives in systems and processes, not in the performance of any one team. This discussion brings together senior value creation and portfolio operations leaders from U.S. private equity firms for a candid peer exchange on where AI is delivering measurable results, where it's falling short, and how leading firms are sequencing implementation across their portfolios.

Speakers

Apurva Nair

Partner with the Private Equity practice, Oliver Wyman

Amjad Shaikh

Vice President, Platform & AI, ServiceNow

Karim R. Lakhani

Dorothy and Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration , Harvard Business School

Dean Estrada

Sr. Managing Director, Capital Strategy Advisors

George Westerman

Principal Research Scientist, Senior Lecturer and Founder of the Global Opportunity Forum, MIT

Guided Questions

Amjad Shaikh

Your work at ServiceNow sits in the practical layer of AI, machine learning, and workflow automation rather than AI as a standalone experiment. For PE-backed companies trying to improve EBITDA without adding headcount, what makes an AI initiative become part of the operating rhythm instead of another pilot sitting outside the business?

Karim R. Lakhani

Karim, your research at HBS and the Digital, Data & Design Institute has focused on how AI changes operating models rather than improving isolated tasks. Where do you see the line right now between AI deployments that meaningfully change how a business operates and ones that produce visible wins without that deeper shift — and what does the difference usually come down to?

Apurva Nair

Oliver Wyman describes your post-deal value-creation work as focused on tangible financial benefit through sourcing, pricing, and sales analytics. Across PE-backed companies, where do you most often see value creation plans lose momentum after close — and what separates the initiatives that actually show up in EBITDA from the ones that create activity without moving the number?

Dean Estrada

Your career has sat right at the intersection of PE operations, acquisitions, capital markets, treasury, and portfolio company finance. When a deal closes and the value creation plan meets the reality of working capital, systems, and the operating team's bandwidth, what's the most common internal breakdown you see — the one that doesn't show up in the deal model but quietly determines whether the plan delivers?

George Westerman

George, your work at MIT has long argued that digital and AI transformation succeeds when it's built as an organizational capability rather than a project. For PE-backed companies that need results in a defined hold period, what does building that capability actually look like — and how do you tell early on whether a company has the conditions to develop it, or is just running another set of projects?