EP11 - Building AI Agents: A Practical Guide for Business Leaders

If you’ve listened to Episodes Five and Six of the Professor Insight Podcast, you’ll know we’ve already laid the groundwork on what Agentic AI is and why it matters. But this week, we’re taking it a step further. This episode is your practical guide to building AI agents—an extension of our earlier discussions, now grounded in real-world application. Based on OpenAI’s newly released Practical Guide to Building Agents, we distill a technical framework into actionable insights tailored for business leaders, strategists, and product teams.

We explore what it actually takes to develop your first AI agent—from choosing the right use case and designing safe, scalable workflows, to configuring models, tools, and instructions that help agents operate autonomously and intelligently. This isn’t just about writing prompts. It’s about building systems that make decisions, take action across platforms, and adapt in real time—all while staying aligned with business goals and compliance requirements.

Whether you're trying to reduce operational friction, tackle high-complexity workflows, or enable more intelligent automation inside your organisation, this episode will give you the clarity and confidence to start building. With insights on orchestration, human-in-the-loop design, and guardrails for safety and governance, this is your field guide to the next evolution of AI in business.