BOSTON – The Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard (D^3) announced today two multi-year corporate partnerships and one research partnership, a first since the Institute’s inception in 2022. The corporate partners include JPMorgan Chase and Boston Consulting Group, who will work with Harvard and Harvard Business School faculty and researchers within their labs at D^3 to conduct scientific research focused on digital transformation and how to best leverage AI and data science to solve business challenges. Microsoft joins D^3 as its first research partner.
“Our mission is to demystify AI to help our partners tackle complex, global business challenges,” said Jen Stave
Jen Stave
, Launch Director at D^3. “We want to be a single source of truth in terms of how AI and digital technologies are impacting the world through business. The insights we glean from working with these partners will have a positive, ripple effect on all businesses.”
In partnering with JPMorgan Chase and BCG, D^3 will be focused on furthering the firms’ aggressive AI strategies. D^3 will work with top-level executives to share the latest insights on how businesses around the world are changing, allowing executives an opportunity to embrace new programs and strategic direction which will increase their competitiveness.
“Even as one of the largest technology investors in the world, with the dawn of the AI age, we are only scratching the surface of what we can do in the future for our clients and our employees,” said Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO, J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management. “Partnering with Harvard’s D^3 team has enabled us to glean insights from some of the smartest minds — complementing the deep expertise we already have inside of JPMorgan Chase. Each of us who works with D^3 is gaining the collective knowledge of all of the companies who are engaged with Harvard, accelerating our understanding of what is possible across industries and functions. The possibilities are endless, and leadership teams with the most curious minds will be the endgame winners.”
“In a world where the collaboration between human intelligence and artificial intelligence is still being explored, our pioneering joint research with D^3 is at the jagged frontier,” said François Candelon, Global Director at BCG Henderson Institute. “This initiative is not just about technological innovation; it’s about shaping the future of how businesses integrate AI to enhance decision-making and drive unparalleled growth.”
D^3 and researchers at Microsoft will engage with a coalition of companies on task-specific research and learning opportunities to identify the best use of Generative AI and new operating model options within the company-specific environment and ensure employees at all levels understand the transformational opportunity ahead of them.
“Like shifting from a typewriter to a PC, AI will change every aspect of work”, says Colette Stallbaumer, WorkLab Cofounder and General Manager of Copilot at Microsoft. “This partnership bridges academia and industry, fusing the insight of AI research with the real-world experiences of our customers. Working together, we can illuminate the path for businesses to drive business growth and democratize opportunity and expertise for professionals around the world.”
D^3 and the Leading with AI Conference
Co-founded by Srikant Datar, George F. Baker Professor of Administration and Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Business School, Karim Lakhani
Karim R. Lakhani
, Dorothy and Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), and Vladimir Jacimovic
Vladimir Jacimovic
, Executive Fellow at HBS, D^3 is made up of an unbiased, multidisciplinary team of global researchers, scientists, business leaders, and entrepreneurs devoted to sharing proven learnings on reshaping business for a digital and AI-first world. The Institute’s research-driven insights, accessible to anyone in the world, help those who want to improve their decision making by understanding the impact of AI.
“We saw a gap in information available for the transformational leaders who are driving the future of business across the globe,” said Lakhani. “We founded D^3 on the premise that AI is only half of the answer, and there needs to be publicly available, actionable insights to help people understand this emerging market and harness its potential. The most successful organizations will be those that recognize change as the only constant and continually adapt in today’s rapidly changing world, and we are the resource for them to do that.”
Corporate and research partnerships enable D^3 to share new information on the implications of AI through educational opportunities, including its first Leading with AI conference co-hosted with Harvard Business School in May. The conference, which includes speakers from Microsoft, Google, BCG Henderson Institute, bp, Netflix, and more, offered the more than 1,000 global business leaders in attendance frameworks for encouraging an AI-forward mindset and operating model.
D^3 consists of numerous Harvard research labs, and all of the Institute’s research is led by Harvard University and Harvard Business School faculty. Annual memberships to D^3 are also available to companies and organizations looking to tap further into the Institute’s resources and network.