Abstract
The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming business decision-making across industries. AI-based prescriptive and cognitive analytics offer significant potential to enhance decision-making, optimise performance, and create new avenues for value creation. This special issue explores the state-of-the-art advancements in prescriptive and cognitive analytics and their implications for business performance. To provide a conceptual foundation, we introduce the Analytics Onion, comprising three interrelated layers: Perspective Analytics, Responsible Analytics, and the Descriptive-Diagnostic-Predictive-Prescriptive-Cognitive (D-D-P-P-C) Analytics framework. The Analytics Onion captures the interplay between human judgment, ethical principles, analytical rigour and intuitive judgment, and the application of AI techniques. The papers in this issue exemplify and expand upon these layers, addressing a diverse range of topics, namely humanoid service robots, business location optimisation, ESG evaluation, energy efficiency, customer churn, prediction-led prescription, innovation culture, user satisfaction with AI, responsible AI for business models, and the impact of executives' emotions on firm value. We highlight emerging opportunities and challenges and offer a forward-looking research agenda to guide future developments in this evolving field.