Artificial Intelligence in Management (ITAO 558) has only been a three-credit class for two semesters, but the course already has notched real world success: Work produced by students in the class will help build a marketing agency’s AI strategy and roadmap, and may also be referenced in future thought leadership and business development content for the company.

“That’s the level of knowledge and hands-on practical experience we are giving students in this evolving field to create value from day one,” says Haroon Abbu, a professor of practice in marketing and analytics who teaches the class.

The work was produced by a team led by Vicente Martinez, a student with the Jenkins Online MBA program at Poole College. Abbu says he is impressed by the initiative of his students. And the company, Site-Seeker – a long-established B2B digital marketing agency – saw the project as a valuable outside lens to sharpen its AI approach as it expands AI-driven client solutions, with support from NC State.

The Seven Dimensions of AI

Martinez’s previous career required a significant amount of travel. After getting married, having children and moving to North Carolina, he decided to change industries and find work that kept him local. He was quickly drawn to the Jenkins Online MBA Program.

“There was a lot of material available within that MBA because it was a STEM MBA – not just a traditional finance, accounting and leadership program – that allowed me to get access and exposure to a lot of tools that I hadn’t used previously that I felt were vital for this area being a tech and research hub,” Martinez notes. ITAO 558 proved an excellent example of how technology and business interact, in a way that only NC State can offer.

For the Fall 2025 semester, Martinez enrolled in Artificial Intelligence in Management.

“There was a lot of material available within that MBA because it was a STEM MBA … that allowed me to get access and exposure to a lot of tools that I hadn’t used previously.”

One of the loci of the class is the Seven Dimensions of AI (from Gartner), which are defined as:

1. AI Ambitions
2. AI Value
3. AI Organization
4. AI People and Culture
5. AI Governance
6. AI Engineering
7. AI-Ready Data

The course’s big project required student teams to apply the Seven Dimensions of AI to a company. Abbu says that students “go through what is needed for developing an AI roadmap,” a step-by-step process where they account for the Dimensions concept and learn how to apply it to improve AI usage and value at a company.

First, the team picked an industry in which they had interest. Within that industry, they had to find a leader and a lagger in using AI. The leader had successfully integrated AI into their services, while the lagger was, per its name, lagging behind and had a clear opportunity for value creation via AI.

The group then applied the Seven Dimensions and identified ways the lagger could implement AI to reach the success of the leader. Once they were done with that phase, the team applied their findings to a focus company, whether that was the lagger or a third party, and showed them how to improve using their own AI roadmap.

At the conclusion of the project, the team gave a presentation to the class. Martinez’s team went one step further and presented their work to the focus company. The company he chose was a quarter-century old, well established in their field and still close to home. 

Site-Seeker

During a family gathering, Martinez had a conversation about his class with Brian Bluff, his wife’s uncle and the CEO and co-founder of Site-Seeker. That conversation revealed that what Martinez was learning in class was in sync with what Site-Seeker was working toward.

Site-Seeker is a B2B digital marketing agency focused on material handling, supply chain and logistics. They build websites, implement HubSpot, and create account-based marketing and digital advertising campaigns. Bluff says the agency’s client base gives it a front-row seat to fast-moving competition, and that pushes the team to test and deploy new approaches early.

“We’re fortunate to work with companies that want to innovate,” he says, “because it lets us develop and implement advanced marketing strategies that actually perform.”

They’ve long provided search engine optimization (SEO) guidance, and they’ve also started offering support for two emerging fields – answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO). The change in search engine technology means it’s no longer sufficient to be on the first page of a Google search: You need to be cited in Google’s AI-generated answer.

“We’re working very fast to get our clients greater exposure in the answer and generative engines,” says Bluff. He’s also in charge of the company’s pivot strategy, and says that the MBA student team’s project aligned perfectly with his work.

Site-Seeker is also building and deploying custom AI agents for manufacturing, supply chain, logistics and material-handling organizations, automating workflows like lead intake, RFQ discovery and faster access to critical information.

The Presentation and Result

Martinez served as group leader and the point of contact for Site-Seeker, but he’s quick to credit his entire team of fellow Jenkins MBA students: Carol Anne Colone, Curt Rask, Eliya Sider and George Green.

“From a research and material generation perspective, everybody contributed equally,” he says. Bluff was impressed with the whole team, noting that he only knew Martinez, “but I could just imagine looking through this project that they were pretty sharp folks.”

Once the class was over, the findings were presented to Site-Seeker. The deliverable functioned as an AI roadmap and maturity assessment, including phased-use cases, budgets and governance, designed to guide execution rather than serve as outward-facing marketing collateral.

“AI is not an abstract concept. It’s practical. It’s applicable. Experiment with it, learn it, and apply it.”

Not long after the presentation, Site-Seeker reached out to Martinez and expressed its intent to use elements of the presentation internally as strategic guidance, and requested permission to use selective portions of the work in external communications as proof of its proactive AI posture. The request worked its way up the chain, with each party impressed by the outcome.

The Site-Seeker team has not yet finalized how they’ll integrate the material into marketing, but Bluff says they’ll be “letting people know that we’re not just sitting back and letting AI happen. We’re taking a proactive role and engaging with smart folks with outside exposure…our goal then is to promote the fact that we do have this credible organization, NC State, out there helping us pressure-test and sharpen our direction. And I think that will help us build our credibility or support people’s perception of our credibility.”

Real-World Impact

A class project evolving into real-world implementation is something that excites Abbu. While he is pleased when student work extends beyond the classroom, he is not surprised. The outcomes align directly with the course’s mission. “One of my key takeaways in this class is to ‘embrace artificial intelligence,’” Abbu says. “AI is not an abstract concept. It’s practical. It’s applicable. Experiment with it, learn it, and apply it.”

He encourages students to bring their projects back to their organizations and share their roadmaps with colleagues and leadership teams. In several cases, that’s exactly what has happened.

“I know of at least three or four students who presented their class projects internally and watched them get implemented at their companies,” he says. “It makes them heroes. Everybody talks about AI. But if you’ve already built something, validated it and pressure-tested it in class, you can take that version to your colleagues and managers. You’re not just talking about AI — you’re leading it. In many ways, we’re making superheroes out of them.”