The Collaboration Muscle: LinkedIn’s Ya Xu

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:02)
Most of us have used LinkedIn to search for a job or to make new professional connections. But how can AI help facilitate all the many ways users engage with LinkedIn? Find out today when we talk with Ya Xu, LinkedIn's head of data.
Welcome to Me, Myself, and AI, a podcast on artificial intelligence in business. Each episode, we introduce you to someone innovating with AI. I'm Sam Ransbotham, Professor of Information Systems at Boston College. I'm also the guest editor for the AI and Business Strategy Big Idea Program at MIT Sloan Management Review.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (0:40)
And I'm Shervin Khodabandeh, senior partner with BCG, and I also co-lead BCG's AI practice in North America. Together, MIT SMR and BCG have been researching AI for six years now, interviewing hundreds of practitioners and surveying thousands of companies on what it takes to build and deploy and scale AI capabilities across the organization and really transform the way organizations operate.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:06)
Shervin and I are excited today to be talking with Ya Xu, head of data at LinkedIn. Yao, thanks for taking the time to join us. Welcome.

**Ya Xu** (1:13)
Thank you for having me.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:15)
Let's start with your current role. What do you do for LinkedIn?

**Ya Xu** (1:19)
I am part of the engineering organization. I lead the team that's called Data. I know it's very confusing to people outside of LinkedIn to realize what data really means. But essentially, if you think about all the data science, AI, and privacy engineering, it's all happening in my organization.
So we do all the way from research to production. So it's a pretty big organization that is really helping the company realizing our ambition in data in AI.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (1:50)
And what is that ambition?

**Ya Xu** (1:52)
It's really using AI, using data to help create economic opportunity for the global workforce.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (2:01)
Comment a little bit more about that. I like, by the way, how you said, look, it's all about creating opportunity and economic value. And you didn't say it's about bringing the most advanced technologies and building sophisticated algorithms, which is all, I'm sure, part and parcel for what you do. But you started with a very higher meta framing and positioning.
Really encouraging to hear that. But just generally comment on what that is for LinkedIn and what role does AI play in that?

**Ya Xu** (2:36)
First of all, I think that creating advanced technology to me, that is how.
The end goal is not just creating technology, but really, like I mentioned, creating opportunities. Maybe I would break it down a little bit. I don't know how well the audience understand LinkedIn in general. We like to think of ourselves as we have three key marketplaces. We have our knowledge marketplace, where if you think about as people creating content on LinkedIn and people consuming content and getting informed so that they can advance in their career and making the right connections to the right people.
That's what we call knowledge marketplace. We also have the talent marketplace. This is when job seekers come to LinkedIn and also employers and companies posting jobs and recruiters finding the right talent for the companies. That's our talent marketplace, which also includes our learning. It's thinking about individuals or professionals who are reskilling themselves so that they can continue to advance in their career or finding new opportunities.
The third marketplace is really what the product services marketplace. This is where marketers come to LinkedIn platform and then really try to identify the buyers for their product and services. Sales individuals come into LinkedIn and really try to identify the buyers as well for them. So if you're thinking about the role that AI plays, hopefully with that context, it's very clear that obviously in the knowledge marketplace, we are really trying to match the content creators with the right content consumers. In the talent marketplace, we really just try to match the job seekers with the right companies and with the right opportunities. And then for the product and services marketplace, we just try to match buyers and sellers, etc. So when you're putting in that context, I hope it's very straightforward to say that obviously data and AI plays such an essential role, because how do you match them? It's really through our advanced technologists that we have in data and AI.

**Shirley Leung** (4:45)
Hi, I'm Shirley Leung. I'm a columnist for the Boston Globe. I want to tell you about a new podcast that I'm hosting. It's called Say More. On Say More, I'll be talking to the doers and thinkers behind the biggest ideas of our time. How business works, how cities thrive, politics, technology, culture. I want to bring you inside those conversations.