About

Twenty-five years in IT, ten of them in applied AI, and a decision to stop building so I can be useful earlier.

I am Ștefan Pănăzan. I ran data science at Carrefour Romania, and worked at IBM and Endava. Before that, data, business intelligence and analytics engagements across manufacturing, banking, consumer goods and energy – Schaeffler Romania on predictive maintenance and industrial IoT, BRD and Raiffeisen on banking analytics, Petrom, Unilever Romania, JTI – plus full-cycle ERP program management.

Engineering degree from Politehnica Bucharest, MBA in management from SNSPA. Board member of a national professional association from 2001 to 2013.

Why I stopped implementing

Ten years of data foundations, models, proofs of concept, production and adoption taught me one thing worth selling: most of what went wrong had been decided before I arrived. The wounds and the scars were the teachers. It is the reason the advice survives execution instead of impressing a boardroom.

How I work

• Direct, not diplomatic. You are paying for the sentence nobody inside your organization is positioned to say.
• Fixed scope, light deliverables. Five pages that get read beat fifty that get filed.
• Every mandate has an exit date. Built to leave.
• No conflicts. There is nothing I can sell you afterwards that depends on the answer I give you now.
• In a session you run the meeting; what I add is pointing out where the team is not actually in agreement, and what that is costing.

What I keep working on

A twelve-grade AI maturity scale and the diagnostic built on it. An AI due diligence method for investors. A framework I call AI Fluid Leadership. And a business fable, Călătoria AI, which is where most of it was first written down.

The company

AI RADAR SRL, Bucharest, Romania. Working languages Romanian and English.