Speaking · Nov 6 to 7, 2026
Human-Centered AI Business Innovation & Transformation: Backcasting the KSAs Our Graduates Will Need
ACBSP Region 2 Conference, College of Southern Maryland, La Plata, MD (The AI Revolution: Reshaping Business, Reinventing Education, and Transforming Our World)
Registration for this event is handled by the host. Details will be added when they are published.
Format: Presentation, 45 to 50 minutes. Primary track: Curriculum Innovation. Secondary track: AI Literacy for Business Students.
Session Title
Human-Centered AI Business Innovation & Transformation: Backcasting the KSAs Our Graduates Will Need to Lead the AI Economy
Session Abstract
AI is not just another tool. Business leaders now compare it to the Industrial Revolution, and Anthropic's CEO describes what is coming as "a country of geniuses in a datacenter." If that is even partly true, the skills our graduates need are changing faster than our curricula can keep up. Teaching forward from today's syllabus will always leave us a step behind.
This session flips the approach. Instead of forecasting from the present, we backcast from the future. We start with a clear picture of the AI workplace of 2030 and beyond, work backward to the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs) our students will actually need, and then redesign the courses and assessments that build them. Drawing on future of work research and live experiments from a graduate Enterprise AI Strategy course at an HBCU, Professor Jeremy Treadwell shares a Human-Centered Business KSA model that treats AI fluency and human judgment as partners, not rivals. The goal is simple: prepare students who can direct intelligent systems instead of competing with them, and put human agency, discernment, and purpose at the center of how we teach business. You will leave with a repeatable backcasting method and a competency map you can apply to your own program.
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
- Explain why teaching forward from today's syllabus falls behind the pace of AI, and how backcasting from the future workforce fixes it.
- Apply a clear backcasting method to name the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities their graduates will need in an AI workplace.
- Use the Human-Centered Business KSA model to pair durable human strengths (judgment, foresight, ethics, adaptability) with technical AI fluency.
- Turn those competencies into real course changes: assignments, assessments, and student experiences drawn from the classroom.
The Human-Centered Business KSA Model
| Dimension | What an AI-transformed workplace demands |
|---|---|
| Knowledge | How AI systems actually work and fail: probabilistic outputs, hallucination, and the difference between narrow and general intelligence. The real cost of AI (data, compute, integration). AI governance, ethics, and bias. |
| Skills | Orchestrating and prompting AI and agentic systems. Critically evaluating AI-generated output. Practicing strategic foresight and backcasting. Making data-informed decisions. |
| Abilities | Judgment and discernment: knowing when to trust, verify, delegate, or refuse. Adaptability under constant technological change. Ethical practical wisdom (phronesis). Human-centered leadership and collaboration. |
Session Flow (45 to 50 minutes)
| Minutes | Segment |
|---|---|
| 0 to 7 | The epochal frame: why calling AI a "tool" undersells the shift, and the competency gap it creates. |
| 7 to 15 | Forecasting vs. backcasting: the method, and why educators should design from the future backward. |
| 15 to 30 | The Human-Centered Business KSA model, with a brief live audience backcast. |
| 30 to 42 | From competencies to curriculum: real assignments and assessments from a graduate Enterprise AI Strategy course. |
| 42 to 50 | Takeaways and Q&A. Attendees leave with a one-page backcasting worksheet for their own program. |
Presenter Biography
Jeremy Treadwell is a Lecturer of Management in the College of Business at Bowie State University, where he teaches management foundations, organizational behavior, and a graduate Enterprise AI Strategy course, and integrates agentic AI into the classroom. A global speaker on artificial intelligence, strategic foresight, and the future of work, he is also Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Simcia Security. His work centers on human agency in the AI economy: how people can lead, direct, and collaborate with intelligent systems rather than be displaced by them. His interactive, decision-driven session formats have been featured on main stages including SANS and ISACA, and published in the ISACA Journal.
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