The Mathematical Corporation

Where Machine Intelligence and Human Ingenuity Achieve the Impossible

By: Josh Sullivan, Angela Zutavern

Narrated by: Fleet Cooper

The most powerful weapon in business today is the alliance between the mathematical smarts of machines and the imaginative human intellect of great leaders. Together they make the mathematical corporation, the business model of the future.

We are at a once-in-a-decade breaking point similar to the quality revolution of the 1980s and the dawn of the internet age in the 1990s: leaders must transform how they run their organizations, or competitors will bring them crashing to earth -- often overnight.

Mathematical corporations -- the organizations that will master the future -- will outcompete high-flying rivals by merging the best of human ingenuity with machine intelligence. While smart machines are weapon number one for organizations, leaders are still the drivers of breakthroughs. Only they can ask crucial questions to capitalize on business opportunities newly discovered in oceans of data.

This dynamic combination will make possible the fulfillment of missions that once seemed out of reach, even impossible to attain. Josh Sullivan and Angela Zutavern's extraordinary examples include the entrepreneur who upended preventive health care, the oceanographer who transformed fisheries management, and the pharmaceutical company that used algorithm-driven optimization to boost vaccine yields.

Together they offer a profoundly optimistic vision for a dazzling new phase in business, and a playbook for how smart companies can manage the essential combination of human and machine.

Critic reviews

"Shrewd corporate executives are realigning their organizations to harness the burgeoning power of cyberintelligence. ... Nonetheless, both corporate executives and government leaders still need inquisitive and creative humans ... A lucid overview of the management principles rapidly moving that world forward."—Booklist (starred review)

"Much has been written recently about the ability to reach better decisions by application of big data. However, Josh Sullivan and Angela Zutavern take us a step beyond by introducing The Mathematical Corporation. Leaders of mathematical corporations combine data analytics with the mathematical intelligence of machines and their own creativity to enhance the quality of current and future decisions. A must read for leaders striving to stay contemporary in a rapidly evolving world."—Larry Bossidy, retired chairman and CEO of Honeywell, co-author of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done and Confronting Reality

"In this interesting and accessible book, Sullivan and Zutavern challenge us to reconsider assumptions about machines 'taking over,' relegating the human factor to a bygone era. Their hopeful alternative scenario for the future instead clearly shows the importance of leaders and employees who work creatively in symbiosis with machines to achieve greater productivity, better innovation and higher profits."—Amy Webb, founder and CEO of the Future Today Institute and author of The Signals are Talking

"Josh Sullivan and Angela Zutavern offer a riveting account of the explosive new combination of machine intelligence and executive imagination. Company managers are solving stubborn problems as never before in areas as diverse as health, mobility and security, and The Mathematical Corporation is a compelling call for the digital mastery of market complexity-now."—Michael Useem, professor of management, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of Fortune Makers: The Leaders Creating China's Great Global Companies

If you dont already know this...

If you do not know what the authors here propose intuitively already I think you might have been sleeaping. The book is okay, but one major thing bugs me. The authors advocate for keeping complexity, but the consept is onely cursary detailed in the book. The details of the consept drowns in anecdotal stories of how big mind has been applied. all inn all an okay read, but I had hoped for more.

a must read for any business man/woman

This book gives a bold take on where the thirst for data and measurable KPIs is leading the corporations of today and their future tomorrow, along with how this changes the demands on the current and future workforce. It's quite a broad stroke on these subjects, but a compelling one nonetheless!

Information gathering and the future of privacy

Whether we like it or not information is being gathered at a stupendous rate about us. Private information, privileged information, confidential information, and public information. If you use the internet it's all being gathered.

How companies should use this is what this book is about. It's not as simple as one might think. Corporations can get ahead by using grey areas where information in the public domain can be considered non private. The author and this book are rightfully against such use, whether they can control its proliferation or not.

It is the information that does not infringe or the information that would make society a better place that is discussed in detail. Privacy may be over in the future, but how we structure the disclosure of information is a spectrum rather than a black and white option.

This book is excellent at presenting all aspects of gathered information and its use for public good, profit, and its protection when needed. Highly recommended read.

Great overview but superficial

Good listen though superficial. Would have liked more detail about each case. Also, the authors are not up to speed on the latest research. They mention the Hot Hand Fallacy, but recent research strongly suggest it might not be a fallacy after all.

USEFUL FODDER, but nothing groundbreaking

The best part of this book is that it brings the whole conversation concisely into one place. You can read other related books & articles & reconstitute all of the knowledge & stories here... but this book is an easy button to have yourself a virtual conversation with the refinement of proper book editing. It was worth my while but not something I studied & took notes on as more groundbreaking works.