My journey to artificial intelligence started when I had to select a topic of my MBA thesis during my studies of ‘Entrepreneurship and Technology Management’. I’ve always liked to think outside of the box, which means that I couldn’t satisfy with an average topic, which has been covered already for hundreds of times.. or even one. It was a tough one – I remember how I was just sitting, looking far into the distance and just a blank in my mind as nothing seemed interesting enough. Until at one point I figured – “but artificial intelligence, it seems something very different!”. And as I was aiming to graduate with honours, I knew that I had to go really deep into the topic — or I have to consider it as a failure.

I discovered a whole new world. The journey was definitely very challenging and I had a lot of obstacles in the beginning when I actually tried to understand how the neural networks or support vector machines work – and the hardest part was to explain that to everybody else in front of the people who actually knew everything about it. However, since I finished the research – a lot has changed. I have been giving lectures, interviews and presentations, written articles and organised conferences and seminars on the topic of artificial intelligence – mainly from the perspective of how it impacts the business world. And I’m loving it.

At some point, I understood that having only a theoretical understanding of AI applications in business is not enough. And that’s when I decided to dive more to the technical world of artificial intelligence. Even while doing my first courses in Python, I was amazed by what can be done. I knew that there are a lot of business people, who are attracted to topics around emerging technologies but find it hard to motivate themselves to actually make the first step towards learning it. And then I thought – but maybe I can share my insights with other people as well? Even if I will create a spark in one person’s eyes and motivate to get more into that topic, it already has paid off.

My goal with this blog is to share the motivation and inspiration with other people like me so they could discover the endless possibilities, which by the end of the day will generate more value to our lives, businesses around us, and satisfaction to our minds. And this whole learning curve doesn’t have to be limited to artificial intelligence. It’s dedicated to every step of automation that can be created in order to generate more value to businesses – whether it’s simple workflow automation, or – artificial intelligence.

Today I’m responsible for the Expansion Analytics domain in a technology firm Bolt, focusing on the global expansion of our ride-hailing service. One of my key competencies is business modeling and automation of reporting – while integrating well-known tools such as Google Sheets with BI software and other data management tools. I work closely with our data analytics, data science, operational teams, and the management — and my work involves topics starting from strategical planning of our expansion activities to the execution of analytical models. I always aim to achieve the highest level of efficiency in the work done, eliminate room for human errors and need for manual work — everything which I at some point hope to share with you as well.