Agentic Intelligence: Strategy at the Speed of Data

Category: Business and Investing
Author: Manish Sood, Venkat Venkatraman
Publisher: Forbes Books
Publication Date: September 15, 2026
Number of Pages: 280
ISBN-13: 979-8887508566

Your AI strategy is not failing because the models are weak; it is failing because your organization cannot think at the speed of its own data. That is the bracing wake-up call that powers Agentic Intelligence, in which Reltio founder Manish Sood and Boston University strategist Venkat Venkatraman argue that the next era of competition will not be won by intuition or algorithms alone, but by “agentic intelligence”: humans and machines sensing, understanding, deciding, and acting together on trusted, unified, real-time data. The book features ten rules across three movements: Strategic Intent, Invest to Monetize, and Implement to Win. The authors are very blunt in their message to readers: stop collecting data and start connecting it, because strategy can no longer be a quarterly ritual or a static plan; it must become a living nervous system that runs at the speed of data itself.

The authors braid academic rigor with practitioner scars, moving from a fictional hospital’s transformation and a cautionary studio’s slow, quiet collapse to hard-edged cases—JPMorgan Chase, AbbVie, Walmart, Rolls-Royce, Zara—exploring themes of data velocity, agentic literacy, and governing autonomy ‘in motion.” The book convincingly portrays AI not as a technology project but as a total organizational redesign, demanding new capital discipline, workflows, and entirely new trust architectures. The message is delivered with rare conviction, clarity, and genuine urgency. This book is for board members, CEOs, and mid-career leaders trapped in pilot purgatory. It is equally valuable for policymakers, consultants, and students entering a workforce where human-machine collaboration will be table stakes. Agentic Intelligence appeals to a wider audience for its narrative-driven, jargon-light, and refreshingly honest approach to the unglamorous plumbing work of data unification. A rare AI book that tells you not what to buy, but what to become; otherwise, the future quietly decides for you.   

Reviewed By: Kim Calderon

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Date: July 19, 2026

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