Unlearning machine learning: The challenge of integrating research in business applications

New applications of Machine Learning, a branch of Artificial Intelligence, have earned billions of dollars for businesses that have cleverly used them. Business professionals in Finance, Marketing, Operations and Logistics and even Strategy are avidly using machine learning applications. In a range of activities from planning for a new product to reorganising supply chains, businesses have a huge stake in research in this field. Yet there has been little evaluation of usefulness of current research and the direction in which it is proceeding. The use of ever more complex algorithms has made machine learning a high-tech highbrow area of research, but robustness and external validity are yet to be established. Focusing on the elegance of the solution is leading researchers towards less-important questions, while there is an unfulfilled need to look at areas which are probably more relevant from the point of view of business.