Shift Left Everything: How Ontology, Events, and Culture Unlocked Enterprise AI with Nachiket Mehta
ServiceNow Podcasts
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Feb 19, 2026
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podcast
Juan and Tim are back for a LIVE episode with Nachiket Mehta, an experienced data leader who has lived and breathed the “shift left”. In this episode we unpack how ontology, events and culture unlock enterprise AI.
We discuss the gap between what your systems think is happening and what's actually happening on the ground and dive into real world examples: a trailer with expensive merchandise sat forgotten in a yard for weeks. $35M in delayed orders. The math added up, but nobody saw it coming. Why? Because we're obsessed with cleaning data and building dashboards, but nobody mapped the happy path vs. the exceptions actually happening on the ground. What is delivery when the customer isn't home? What's "lost in transit" versus "sitting in our own yard"?
The solution? Send your ontologist to the fulfillment center. Build tiger teams. Shift your data teams left to act like software product teams. And most importantly: connect the five why's back to your OKRs, or you're just building features nobody needs.
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https://omny.fm/shows/catalog-and-cocktails-the-honest-no-bs-data-podcast/shift-left-everything-how-ontology-events-and-culture-unlocked-enterprise-ai-with-nachiket-mehta