Eric Bradlow
Partnership with Wharton Business School
Vice Dean of AI and Analytics, The Wharton School
There are scholars who study how businesses win, and there are operators who go build the winners. Eric Bradlow is both: a scholar who leads Wharton's AI and data science effort, and an operator who has built and sold one of his companies to Google and another to Fox Interactive Media. He shows audiences where to place their biggest bets, and where not to, from what the numbers say, not what sounds good in the room.
Every company is now spending heavily on AI and data, and most cannot tell what is working from what is only expensive noise. Bradlow is the person companies call to cut through it. For thirty years he has built the models that show a business where its real opportunities and real risks are, so it can act with evidence instead of hope. He runs Wharton’s AI and data science effort, ten research centers and about fifty people, and roughly ten million dollars a year of work with the world’s largest companies.
What makes him rare is that he has spent his career on both sides of the divide most academics never cross. He trained as a statistician, earned his PhD at Harvard, and became the person other researchers turn to when a problem is too new to have a method yet. He was among the first to make sense of motion-tracking data and text data when no one knew what to do with them. Then he built the businesses. He wrote the code behind one of the first ad-targeting engines. Fox Interactive Media bought it. He co-founded a second company. Google bought this one. Today he is Chief Research Officer of GBK Collective, a data-science-based strategy firm that unlocks the value hidden inside the data of Fortune 100 companies. He does not describe where the value is. He finds it for a living.
Audiences do not politely listen to Bradlow. He locks a room in from the first story, and he does not let go. That command comes from thirty years teaching the Wharton MBA core, from a wall of teaching awards, and from a decade on air hosting Wharton Moneyball on SiriusXM. An hour with him feels like putting on X-ray vision. Suddenly you can see beneath the surface of your own business, to where the value hides and where the next win is waiting. His Wharton-Accenture Skills Index read two hundred million resumes against two hundred million job postings. It became the most widely covered work of his career, featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Business Week. What audiences take from him is a single, freeing idea. In a world of AI, there are no more excuses for guessing, because you can now know the smartest move before you ever have to make the call.
Why Audiences Will Be Better Off
- Audiences leave knowing where to place their biggest bets, and where to walk away.
- Audiences leave able to separate the AI and data that create real value from the spend that only creates noise.
- Audiences leave able to turn the customer data they already own into decisions, not just dashboards.
- Audiences leave with an evidence-based read on what AI is doing to their industry and their jobs.
- Audiences leave able to spot the opportunity their competitors have missed.
Featured Videos
Eric Bradlow
Speaker Reel
Eric Bradlow’s Speech Topics
Moneyball for Business: Where to Place Your Bets
Every company is making bets on customers, on products, on where to invest, and most are still guessing. The same data science that changed how teams bet on players can tell a business where its real opportunities are and where the market has it wrong. Bradlow shows audiences how to read their own numbers for the bets worth making and the ones worth walking away from, using the approach he brings to Wharton Moneyball. It feels like being let inside the game, and it changes how a room makes its next big call. Audiences leave knowing how to find the bet the competition cannot see.
The Real Read on AI: What Works, What Doesn't, and What to Do About It
Most companies are spending on AI faster than they can measure the return. Bradlow cuts through the noise with the one thing most speakers lack, a track record of building these systems and selling them. He shows audiences how to separate the AI that creates real value from the AI that only creates activity, and which decisions to entrust to a machine versus keep in human hands. Drawing on his work for the Fortune 100, he makes the line between real and hype concrete rather than theoretical. Audiences leave with a clear test for where AI belongs in their business and where it does not.
The Data Advantage: Turning Customer Information Into Growth
Most companies know how much they sell but not why, because their customer data sits in systems that do not speak to each other. Bradlow has spent his career unlocking the value trapped in that data for the world's largest companies. He shows audiences why the answers they need are already sitting in what they own, and what it takes to turn that raw information into pricing, loyalty, and growth. This is the applied science of customer profitability, told by the person companies hire to do the work. Audiences leave able to turn the data they already have into decisions that move the business.
The Future of Work: What the Data Says About AI, Jobs, and Skills
The conversation about AI and jobs is full of fear and short on evidence, so Bradlow brought data to it. His Wharton-Accenture Skills Index compared two hundred million resumes with two hundred million job postings to show exactly which skills companies now need and where the gaps are opening. He gives audiences a clear, research-backed picture of how AI is reshaping work, which roles are changing, and how their people can prepare. This is the future of work told through evidence that made the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, not through speculation. Audiences leave knowing which skills matter now and how to get ahead of the shift.
What other organizations say about Eric Bradlow
Eric Bradlow was incredible. The program was energizing, rigorous, engaging, and applicable.
Business Conferences / Audiences
Bring This Speaker to Your Stage
Tell us about your event and our team will confirm availability and fees right away.