Mathemarketing: How to use AI to build the perfect growth formula

What’s the exact recipe of business success? Even if you had one, how would you measure the many variables that move a business and make it grow? Now, even, if you were able to monitor all the players in your company network, how would you make sense of the tons of data collected by the thousands of touchpoints out there? We did not have an answer, until now. We have AI, now. This is why we sit down with Marco Di Dio Roccazzella, General Manager and shareholder at Jakala, a European and independent Data & AI leader.

What’s the magic business formula for growth?

Marco Di Dio Roccazzella: AI changes everything, as you can imagine. The formula of what I call ‘business impact’ would look like this:

Business Impact = [(Customers × Operations × Employees) ^ AI] X (Semantic Capital)

This is a conceptual model for thinking of business value in the era of AI. It is not a mathematical formula – so to speak, but rather an epistemological model, which describes how business impact emerges from the synergy between people, technology, and meaning. There are three components to the model. AI is not just an operational ingredient, but a transformative force that acts exponentially on customers, processes, and employees. However, real impact manifests itself only when this cognitive system intertwines with semantic capital, namely the wealth of knowledge, language, and values that gives true meaning to all organizational actions.

Ok, let’s break it down. Tell us about people and processes, first. 

Marco Di Dio Roccazzella: The multiplicative part of the formula (customers × operations × employees) represents the idea of an integrated and interdependent ecosystem. Customers, processes, and people are the three vital pillars of every organization. The multiplication shows that these factors are not additive, but synergistic: value emerges only from their coherence. If any one of the three is weakened, the entire system loses strength, like in the weakest link idea. The overall effectiveness is limited by its least developed component. This approach shifts the perspective from the efficiency of individual departments to the quality of the relationships that unite them. Business impact thus arises as the emergent effect of a dynamic balance between people, processes, and customers, not as the sum of their individual performances.

Exactly like in online platforms, or B2B2C businesses. Now, tell me about AI. 

Marco Di Dio Roccazzella: AI, placed as an exponent, does not represent a simple multiplier, but an element that changes the nature of the system. AI intervenes in the three fundamental dimensions of any business — customers, operations, and employees — transforming them into a cognitive ecosystem. It does not add value in a linear way but amplifies it exponentially. The shift from additive to exponential logic is crucial: AI not only boosts productivity, but also redefines the structure of value, introducing a dimension of forecasting, learning, and continuous adaptation. In this sense, AI acts as a cognitive multiplier: an engine that extends the organization’s capacity to perceive, understand, and decide. It’s about what I know of the world around me. If data flows fast enough, AI will make good use of that knowledge to give superpowers to operations, employees and, therefore, customers. Supply chains that control every inch of the value chain will win in the future.

All clear. Let’s move to the idea of semantic capital. What is that?

Marco Di Dio Roccazzella: Semantic capital is the space of meaning, in which AI and business processes are immersed. The idea comes from the reflections of Professor Luciano Floridi, the known Professor at Yale University (US), and it refers to the wealth of knowledge, language, and values that contribute to an organization’s cognitive culture. Semantic capital is what enables the interpretation, guidance, and contextualization of AI’s actions. While AI processes data, semantic capital processes meaning. The link with the rest of the equation can be thought of as an element of ‘tension’: a bi-univocal relationships between the operational and the semantic domain. In this space, every interaction generated by AI finds a meaningful translation, which is consistent with the organization’s culture and language. It is here that technology ceases to be a mere tool and becomes a situated intelligence, capable of generating value that is understandable and shared.

In a nutshell, we can have the same network, similar quality of employees serving fans, and an equivalent pool of customer, say in a specific market, but it’s the culture and value that we nurture as a business, which allows AI to magnify a unique way of catering to fans out there, so much as that – if we take the luxury market for example – Ferrari will be different than Bugatti or Rolls Royce, or BYD, in shaping mobility or experiences to their final customers. Market leaders will keep winning if they know something about the world that nobody else does, and if they instill in their structure values, ethics and business responses that are in line with their vision of the world. The formula of business impact and success rests on humans, and how they incarnate the power and knowledge created by an AI-powered network of people and processes. We need AI as much as we need humans, to craft a vision and create a culture of service and growth.

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