Journey to the Frontier is an invite-only event that convenes senior leaders for an immersive, research-anchored exploration of Frontier Firms in the AI era, where strategy meets lived experience. In an intimate, peer-driven setting, leaders will engage with Harvard Business School faculty and experts to examine how AI is creating measurable value across functions such as operations, organizational design, and customer experience, and leave clear on what to do next.
- Build Frontier Leaders
- Showcase HBS Faculty Research
- Learn from Business Leaders
- Accelerate AI Investment
Key Details
What: An exclusive, invite-only event for 100 business leaders.
When: Wednesday, March 11, 2026.
Where: Boston, MA
Hosted By
Jared Spataro
Chief Marketing Officer, AI at Work, Microsoft
Dr. Karim Lakhani
Founding Chair of the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard and Dorothy & Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School
Agenda
8:30 – 9:00 AM
Breakfast & Registration
9:00 – 9:15 AM
Welcome
9:15 – 10:15 AM
D^3 AI Research Lightning Talks:
Kadeem Noray
Title: Human vs. AI in Recruiting: Evidence for Software Engineering
Hanspeter Pfister
Title: Trust but Verify: Making Agentic AI Transparent and Robust
Julian De Freitas
Title: Mourning the Loss of AI Companions
Ashley Whillans
Title: A Generative Agent Platform for Simulating Employees’ Psychological Experiences Over Time
10:15 – 10:30 AM
Break
10:30 – 12:00 PM
Experience the HBS Case Method with Iavor Bojinov and Edward McFowland
12:00 – 1:00 PM
Networking Lunch
1:00 – 1:30 PM
Pardon the Interruption with Karim Lakhani and Jared Spataro
1:30 – 3:00 PM
Q&A on Frontier Firm AI Initiative Research:
Measuring Business Impact of AI: Clifford Chance: “How is AI Changing Work?” with Michael Ferdinand, Yolanda Hall, and Iavor Bojinov
Operational Performance & Tacit Knowledge with Lumen: “How do we scale expert know-how into day-to-day performance?” with Umesh Lakshman, Shunyuan Zhang, and Raffaella Sadun
Agent Boss: Ernst & Young: “How to Build Agents and Trust within an Organization?” with Chris Withers and Iavor Bojinov
3:00 – 3:30 PM
Break
3:30 – 5:00 PM
Lessons from AI Natives Activity with Rembrand Koning
Every executive knows AI matters—but the real challenge isn’t adopting AI, it’s solving the mapping problem: figuring out where and how it creates value across your business. Building on case studies of AI-native startups that have cracked how to reorganize their firms and workflows around AI, you’ll get hands-on with vibe coding and agentic AI tools to start this transformation yourself. Please bring your laptop for this session.
5:00 – 5:30 PM
Closeout