Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in business: implications, applications and methods

The concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a business-disruptive technology has developed in academic and professional literature in a chaotic and unstructured manner. This study aims to provide clarity over the phenomenon of business activation of AI by means of a comprehensive and systematic literature review, aimed at suggesting a clear description of what Artificial Intelligence is today. The study analyses a corpus of 3780 contributions through an original combination of two established machine learning algorithms (LDA and hierarchical clustering). The review produced a structured classification of the various streams of current research and a list of promising emerging trends. Results have shed light on six topics attributable to three different themes, namely Implications, Applications and Methods (IAM model). Our analysis could provide researchers and practitioners with a meaningful overview of the body of knowledge and research agenda, to exploit AI as an effective enabler to drive business value.