The work

Three kinds of engagement.

AI now enters all three: where it sits in the organization, what it does to the business model, and what the strategy assumes.

Organization design

Structures designed with the Viable System Model: who decides, what each part does, how the whole stays viable. At Seneca it located where the AI Lab belonged.

Business models

How an enterprise defines and achieves success over time, mapped on the Flourishing Business Canvas.

Strategy

Built from stakeholders and materiality, then sequenced into programmes, each with an owner, a cost and a measure. At Grivalia it was sustainability strategy, on ISO 26000, GRI and GRESB.

Through the classroom

OCAD University, since 2019: student teams in my course have worked on the organization design and business models of more than 30 organizations, among them North York General Hospital, Metrolinx, the Canadian Armed Forces and Holland Bloorview.

Seneca Polytechnic, 2018 to 2023: student teams in the capstone of the Sustainable Business Management program I coordinated took on live sustainability challenges for client organizations, among them the City of Toronto, BGIS and Sun Life.

Panagiotis is a brilliant systems-thinker with deep know-how and an impressive ability to convey difficult and complex notions/concepts to a wide audience. ... I strongly recommend Panagiotis without hesitation.

Alex Athanassoulas Stirixis Group, 2011

Selected work

Seneca Polytechnic

Generative AI adoption, 2024 to 2026

Role AI Thought Leader at Seneca, co-lead with Kent Peel.

One of Canada's largest polytechnics wanted faculty, staff and students using generative AI in their actual work, with policy and practice moving together.

Co-led with Kent Peel, Seneca's other AI Thought Leader. A Viable System Model session located the missing piece at System 4, and we designed the AI Lab to fill it.

The AI Lab, from the case to the Senior Executive Committee to opening day, and a community of practice of hundreds of colleagues.

The Seneca AI Lab Opening day The adoption story at AskRight

Polytechnics Canada, October 2026. I speak at 0:31 and 3:17 about how AI use spreads across Seneca and why the AI Lab needed a physical space.

...we're trying to come up with new ideas, new ways of working and then disseminate across the institution.

Panos Panagiotakopoulos, Polytechnics Canada video, 0:31

The adoption, read through the Viable System Model

S5: Knowing who we areThe shared identity and values that hold everything together and settle the pull between today and tomorrow.
The Generative AI Policy, and input to the AI Governance Charter
S4: Looking outward and aheadWatching the world, preparing for the future, and keeping a clear picture of ourselves.AI Lab
Training, consultation and early prototyping
S3: Making the whole work togetherGetting more from the parts together than they would get alone, and agreeing who gets which resources.
A simple way to approve new AI tools, and everyday guidance
S2: Keeping the parts in stepThe schedules and shared rules that stop units from clashing with each other.
A community of practice of hundreds of colleagues
S1: Doing the workThe schools, programs and services that actually deliver for students.
Hands-on workshops and dozens of consultations

The AI Lab became System 4, the part of Seneca that looks outward and ahead.

Viable System Model after Stafford Beer. Figures as published on askright.ai/seneca, from the Seneca AI Work Retrospective, October 2026.

Hundreds

colleagues in the AI community of practice

4.6out of 5

average rating for the hands-on workshops

course sections running MyTutor within five months

80+

employees in one institution-wide session

Grivalia Properties

Listed real estate investment company, Greece, 2015 to 2018

A listed property company had taken selective sustainability steps, but had no strategy and no way into GRESB, the benchmark its investors read.

We mapped 12 stakeholder groups and had 7 departments rate 30 sustainability issues against ISO 26000, GRI G4 and GRESB. The strategy turned 34 gaps into 38 programmes, short to long term, each with an owner, a cost and its GRESB points. Co-delivered with Sustain, which led the GRESB submissions.

A GRESB Green Star in 2018, the company's third cycle in the benchmark.

The strategy's programmes, by time to deliver and cost

Short term Mid term Long term ↑ Higher cost 0 1 2 3

Short term Mid term Long term Higher cost → 0 1 2 3

Years to deliverCircle size: GRESB points the programme targets

58%of the GRESB pointssat in the short-term programmes, all at the low end of the cost scale.

Grivalia Sustainability Strategy, Close the Loop with Sustain, 2015.

Apigea

Agro-bio cluster, Greece, 2017 to 2018

A new cluster was to bring farmers, academia, research institutes, businesses and NGOs together around organic bee and medicinal plant products. The ambition was clear, the structure was not.

We mapped the idea onto a Flourishing Business Canvas, then used the Viable System Model to find the processes that deliver the purpose and nest them, rather than flattening everything onto one board.

Three value streams, each with a case for its own autonomy. The founder's vague coordinating role became an explicit choice: a cooperative the members run, or a cluster the founder governs.

One board, or three nested areas

Three areas, nested inside the holding. Each has a case for its own autonomy, and the holding coordinates between them.

Final project report, February 2018, and Panagiotakopoulos, Weisfeld, Upward and Pinnel, Sustainable Business Modelling. Area names as in the report; member dots are illustrative.

Ecolabel Decision Support System

Funded research, 2012 to 2015

More than 450 ecolabels exist. Companies pick one on instinct, then fail its requirements or buy a label their market does not recognize.

A five-step online system: filter the field to the labels that fit the company's products and strategy, score the survivors on 56 characteristics weighted by that company's priorities, then assess compliance and return the actions that close the gap. Built on the Viable System Model.

A three-year, EUR 140,000 project delivered as a working tool, tested with 8 companies and 9 products across tourism, agriculture and construction.

Worked example: a hotel's services

The hotel already met only 57% of Green Seal's requirements. The three labels it met almost in full, 96 to 97%, were worth least to it.

One hotel's services, from the project's System A and B report, June 2014.

Also worked with

Business model and organizational design: BMO, Vivenda, MEDASSET, Apigea, Nisa Homes, Wuxly
Strategy: Grivalia Properties, PoliSpark

Executive AI coaching and the rest of the practice

Organization design, business models and strategy.