Over the past few months I have spoken with the management teams of a number of large public companies about the potential for generative AI to impact their businesses. And I know many of my colleagues at Bain and Company, as well as our competitors, have been having similar conversations. In short, just about every company is now in a mad rush to figure out what to do... we recently conducted a study, interviewing leaders at 600 companies:
And quite a lot of those companies are moving quickly, when asked, "do you believe early AI movers will have a sustainable advantage?" 2/3 said YES.
So what should your company be doing to be an early mover? Here is some pragmatic advice.
- Knowledge worker productivity -- an MIT working paper suggests that time to complete tasks can be reduced and quality improved -- "Experimental Evidence on the Productivity Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence" To do this well, purchase a business license through Anthrophic, Microsoft Azure, or OpenAI to insure confidentiality of your business content. Also put in place an education program for your employees so that they understand how to use, watch out for potential errors, and get the greatest value.
- Transform functions -- first to be transformed will be marketing and customer support but we will rapidly see generative AI in every enterprise function -- finance, HR, procurement, supply chain, etc. Stanford/MIT study "Generative AI at Work" outlines the magnitude of the potential impact. Work will be redesigned and new models will need to be adopted. Establish a working group that can analyze business processes and apply knowledge of these technologies to function redesign. Front-line employees' jobs will change, supervisors will need to learn different skills in managing these employees, and the speed and quality of work will increase.
- New products and services -- what your company delivers to customers, how it is delivered, the price, and other characteristics could all change with generative AI. This is the most challenging area to think through. Some starting points -- how can a chat user experience replace the way your customers currently interact with you or your product? What data-oriented products or service might accompany what you deliver now? How can generative AI improve or even replace some aspect of your product or service? And eventually you'll need to ask core questions about whether a new business model and strategy will be required. Stand up an innovation capability to start this exploration.
Two thought pattern mistakes to avoid:
Analysis/paralysis -- so many reasons not to do anything! Push those aside, just get started. The sooner you start exploring how these technologies will change how you work and how your business operates, the faster you'll be on the road to radical transformation and pulling ahead of your competition.
Linear vs exponential -- don't evaluate what is possible based on what we have today, the capabilities of these technologies are swiftly evolving. If you run into a barrier or limitation, don't say "this means we can't do X" but rather ask "I wonder how/when this will be solved and thus when we can do X."
Good luck in your adaptability journey!
VP of Sales | AI & Automation Strategist | Driving Operational Excellence & Accelerated Market Impact | Author & Speaker | Guiding Enterprises Towards Agile Transformation
1 年Right on Ted Shelton ! Great pragmatic insight!
Management Consultant
1 年Excellent advice Ted. Some thoughts: ? 1?Knowledge worker productivity – Yes, purchase the product licenses & develop an education program for employees. Further, bring your employees into the design process.?Create multi-disciplinary teams who can learn AI & apply it to their jobs. Bringing AI to an enterprise at scale will be a process that takes time & will require a learning curve for many types of employees.?In a word: Iterate.? 2 Transform Functions- Transformation short sells the power of AI.?To take full advantage, enterprises will need to truly reimagine functions, processes, & business models.?Again, this type of change will take time, & in order to make it happen, companies will need to build teams that have the skills to do this work, & most importantly, teams that are incented and challenged to think outside the box on how work gets done. 3 New Products & Services – It will be a challenge to think through.?Use AI to introduce a new era of ‘Co-Creation’.?Tuning AI to co-creation will give companies an ‘always on’ product management & development window across all products & services.?Using generative AI, companies can engage with customers in real time to gain input & ideas for product improvements & new innovations.?
Top AI Voice | CEO | Board Member | Gartner Peer Ambassador | Speaker | Author | Bridge Builder
1 年Good one Ted Shelton. Many are in the beginners phase and I like the viewpoint on the Xfactor thinking (exponential).
We had an excellent panel of experts re Talent Ops - creating an organization designed to focused on Talent RIO. More than ever, motivation and productivity needs to be understood and managed. Gen AI creates that opportunity. RE the panel - we translated the outcome from audio to text via otter.ai. High edited and then used GPT4. One lesson, it is a tool and needs to be used properly to produce results. The results turned out great. 95% very good. 75% time saved.