Book Brief: The AI-First Company

Title: The AI-First Company: How to Compete and Win with Artificial Intelligence Author: Ash Fontana Published: 2021 by Portfolio / Penguin What It Teaches: Ash Fontana is a managing director of Zetta Venture Partners, an investment fund focused on AI. He draws upon the lessons he's learned through the companies he's invested in and worked with to share a very broad array of observations about how companies should think about, leverage, and manage data and artificial intelligence. He introduces a new concept, data learning effects, as the driving value creator in what I call the Connected Intelligence age. When To Use It: In the book's conclusion, Fontana describes the contents of The AI-First Company as "fresh data" that leaders can "process" and combine with other inputs as they iteratively create reinforcing learning loops that enable them to create their own competitive advantage. As such, the broad array of information in the book shouldn't be viewed as perfect or a step-by-step roadmap for building a winning AI-led strategy, but rather one input among others that can help inform your strategy, if appropriately filtered and evaluated.