Wharton@Work

August 2025 | 

The Leadership Blueprint for an AI-Powered World

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how we live, work, and lead — but the hype and fear surrounding AI can obscure what matters most: its capacity to augment human potential. That’s the premise of Leading an AI-Powered Future, a new program from Wharton Executive Education that equips leaders across industries to harness AI thoughtfully, strategically, and ethically.

Designed for professionals with strategic influence — from C-suite executives to innovation consultants and HR leaders — the program doesn’t aim to turn business leaders into data scientists. Instead, it helps them reframe how they think about AI — not as a distant technical challenge, but as an immediate leadership responsibility.

“We wanted to meet leaders where they are — not just in terms of technical fluency, but in terms of imagination,” says Wharton Professor Stefano Puntoni, who serves as the program’s academic director. “Everyone’s asking, ‘What could go wrong with AI?’ This program challenges them to ask a different question posed by Reid Hoffman, who teaches the program’s first session: ‘What could possibly go right?’”

That question serves as both inspiration and intellectual provocation throughout the course. Participants explore ideas and frameworks through case studies, video lessons, and structured activities that prompt reflection and application. The curriculum is organized around four modules, each examining a different leadership lens on AI — from strategic adoption to workforce transformation to customer experience.

A Mindset Shift for the AI Age

What sets this program apart is its emphasis on mindset over mechanics. While many business-focused AI offerings zero in on tools and tactics, Leading an AI-Powered Future starts with the premise that leadership in this space requires something deeper: the ability to think ethically, systemically, and creatively about the impact of AI on people, processes, and performance.

Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and AI investor, helps set the tone early in the program with a conversation about what he calls “informational GPS” — a metaphor for how AI can serve as a navigation aid through complexity, not just a shortcut around it.

“The key idea is augmentation, not automation,” says Puntoni. “How do we help leaders move beyond the fear that AI will replace people, and instead focus on how it can expand their capacity to lead, decide, and innovate?”

To that end, the program integrates frameworks like the AI stack, AI-human collaboration models, and prompting strategies for large language models. Participants don’t just learn what these tools are — they experiment with how to use them, assess their limitations, and reflect on what ethical oversight looks like in practice.

Faculty Insights at the Frontier

The program draws on the expertise of Wharton’s AI-focused faculty, including Nicolaj Siggelkow, Lynn Wu, Stefano Puntoni, and Christian Terwiesch. Their research spans marketing, operations, strategy, and organizational behavior — fields where AI is already reshaping how decisions are made and value is created.

Wu explains the implications of AI’s “vertical integration” — the growing dominance of a few firms in the hardware, cloud, and model layers that underpin the AI ecosystem. This concentration, she argues, poses strategic and ethical challenges for companies looking to build AI capability without ceding control or transparency.

Siggelkow walks participants through how generative AI can amplify connected customer experiences — by moving beyond one-off transactions to seamless, ongoing relationships. Participants learn how to map those journeys using frameworks like “respond to desire,” “curated offering,” “coach behavior,” and “automatic execution” — while also considering the thin line between personalization and intrusion.

Each module includes required activities designed to nudge participants out of passive consumption and into applied thinking. In one, learners map out AI-human workflows using real-world scenarios from their own organizations. In another, they design strategies to prepare teams for AI adoption — balancing efficiency gains with long-term professional development and well-being.

From Curiosity to Fluency

The learning experience invites participants to experiment. One activity asks them to use a state-of-the-art chatbot to explore a topic they’re personally curious about — then reflect on what the AI got right, where it fell short, and how their prompting strategy evolved. The goal isn’t technical mastery — it’s intellectual fluency.

“We’re helping leaders build the muscle to engage with AI critically,” says Puntoni. “It’s not just about knowing what to ask, but knowing how to evaluate what you get back.”

Other exercises focus on leadership implications, such as designing AI-human collaboration workflows, assessing generative AI's effect on job roles, and applying AI frameworks to real workplace scenarios. A module on workforce transformation explores how organizations can align augmentation models with ethical leadership and employee well-being.

“This isn’t a program about how to use a particular AI tool,” says Puntoni. “It’s about how to lead in a world where AI is already embedded in your customer experience, your productivity, your decisions — even your culture.”

Leading Through Uncertainty

The stakes for AI leadership are no longer theoretical. As organizations race to adopt AI, the burden increasingly falls on non-technical leaders to ensure that those tools are implemented with discipline, clarity, and humanity.

Leading an AI-Powered Future doesn’t offer easy answers. Instead, it asks leaders to grapple with hard questions: How do we preserve human judgment in AI-powered workflows? How do we design job roles that balance augmentation and autonomy? What does it mean to lead when algorithms shape so much of what employees and customers see, experience, and believe?

The throughline across the program is that leadership in the age of AI isn’t about replacing people with machines. It’s about helping people thrive alongside them. “We’re living through a cognitive industrial revolution,” says Puntoni. “And like any revolution, the outcome isn’t predetermined. It depends on the choices we make — and the leaders we develop — right now.”