A 12-person data science team driving AI transformation across a $50B+ global conglomerate. Shashank Kadetotad, Global Sr. Director of Enterprise Data Science and AI at Mars, reveals how his lean team accelerates outcomes across hundreds of brands by building composable "accelerator" modules, defining criteria for failure before they start, and staying vendor-agnostic in a rapidly shifting AI landscape.

Shashank shares how Mars went from weeks-long deployments to days using standardized forecasting and optimization accelerators, why governance is the biggest enabler of scale rather than a bottleneck, and how the AI Lab they built provides a safe space for experimentation with built-in failure criteria. From pizza-team principles borrowed from Amazon to the discipline of killing pilots early, this episode is packed with practical lessons for ...