Spotlight Two: Data Makes the World Go Round with Dr. Fern Halper

Spotlight Two: Data Makes the World Go Round with Dr. Fern Halper

From Redefining AI: The Award Winning Tech Podcast by Lauren Hawker Zafer

May 27, 2026 · 1 min · Season 5 · Episode 2

About this episode

Dr. Fern Halper discusses the challenges and strategies for successful enterprise AI implementation.

Why Most Enterprise AI Projects Hit a "Value Ceiling" — And How to Break Through | Dr. Fern Halper What separates the companies actually winning with AI from the ones burning budget on chatbots that go nowhere? In this upcoming episode of Redefining AI, host Lauren Hawker Zafer sits down with Dr. Fern Halper — VP of Research at TDWI, Founder of the AI Foundations Group, former Bell Labs lead analyst, and one of the most respected voices in enterprise AI strategy — to unpack the ideas behind her highly anticipated new book, Data Makes the World Go 'Round: The Data, Tech, and Trust Behind AI Success . With over 30 years bridging deep technical execution and C-suite strategy, Dr. Halper explains why so many organisations are stuck chasing hype instead of value, and what it actually takes to move AI from lab experiments into production systems that drive real ROI. Inside this upcoming episode, you'll learn: Why generative AI hits a "value ceiling" without trusted, governed data foundations The execution traps that sank AI initiatives at Zillow, Amazon, and others How data lakehouses and data fabric architectures unify siloed data for AI Why MLOps is so hard — and why every model…

People in this episode

Host: Lauren Hawker Zafer

Guest: Dr. Fern Halper

Topics covered

  • enterprise AI
  • data governance
  • AI strategy
  • MLOps
  • data architectures
  • AI use cases
  • value creation

Keywords

  • AI projects
  • value ceiling
  • data lakehouses
  • data fabric
  • generative AI
  • AI governance
  • ROI

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: TDWI, Bell Labs, Zillow, Amazon

Books & works: Data Makes the World Go 'Round: The Data, Tech, and Trust Behind AI Success

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