.the corporate AI blindspot - you're thinking too narrow

I decided to finish the draft and publish a bonus episode of hankka newsletter because a) I missed a couple of weeks of postings in the last months and b) AI developments are progressing so fast, I’m afraid something I wrote a month or even a week ago, may no longer be relevant next week ??. Also, I want to share more meat; my learnings and insights from technology, not only my reflections on leadership and self-growth. So here it goes.

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I've recently read Azeem Ahzar's Exponential View newsletter where he was pointing out to how most companies think of AI too narrowly. They're so focused on the immediate gains—cost-cutting and incremental improvements, that they're missing the forest for the trees. Azeem believes, the true potential of AI isn't just about doing what we already do more efficiently - it's about reimagining what's possible.

On one side, you have researchers and developers pushing the boundaries of what AI can do. On the other, you have corporate boardrooms celebrating modest efficiency gains. This gap isn't just a missed opportunity. It's a threat to companies that fail to grasp the transformative power of AI.

The three levels of AI integration

Azhar outlines three levels of AI integration in businesses:

• Level 1: Do what we do cheaper
• Level 2: Do what we do, just do it better
• Level 3: Do entirely new things

Most companies are stuck at Levels 1 and 2. They're using AI to automate customer service, streamline data entry, or improve existing processes, but all on the very basic levels. While these are valuable improvements, they're just the tip of the iceberg.

The real revolution happens at Level 3. This is where AI enables companies to do things that were previously impossible or unimaginable. It's not about replacing human workers with chatbots; it's about empowering humans to tackle challenges they never could before, like developing new drugs at much faster rate, or predict natural disasters with unprecedented accuracy, potentially saving thousands of lives, or predict equipment failures in manufacturing before they happen, minimising downtime and increasing productivity. There are endless possibilities, many of which, we can't even imagine yet.

Rethinking entire business processes

Many leaders make the mistake of trying to shoehorn AI into existing processes. They ask, "How can AI make this process more efficient?" instead of "What entirely new processes could AI enable?"

This limited thinking stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of AI's capabilities. AI isn't just a tool to be applied to existing workflows; it's a catalyst for reimagining how work is done.

Take the example of product development in a consumer goods company. Traditional processes are designed around human limitations—the number of ideas we can generate, the speed at which we can evaluate them, and the resources required to develop them. AI has the potential to upend these assumptions entirely.

You might be able to generate and preliminarily evaluate thousands of product ideas in the time it used to take to brainstorm a dozen. This doesn't just make the existing process faster- it fundamentally changes what's possible.

In the traditional product development funnel, you might start with 100 ideas and whittle them down through various stages. But what happens when AI can generate 100,000 ideas? Or a million? The entire funnel needs to be reimagined.

This exponential increase in idea generation isn't limited to product development. It applies to problem-solving in general. Whether you're looking for new market opportunities, trying to optimise a supply chain, or developing a marketing strategy, AI can generate and preliminarily evaluate orders of magnitude more options than a human team ever could.

Decision-making made easier

AI doesn't just generate more ideas; it can also dramatically alter how decisions are made within an organisation. Traditional decision-making processes are often bottlenecked by human cognitive limitations and organisational hierarchies. AI has the potential to remove many of these bottlenecks.

For instance, AI can enable more decentralised decision-making by providing lower-level employees with insights and recommendations that previously required years of experience or access to high-level strategic information. Now, even your most junior person can assist a customer much faster and provide a solution that a colleague in another team division already worked on. With such decision intelligence platforms, everyone can benefit from organisational tribal knowledge, bearing all the permissioning levels of course (even the fact that a person knows that an answer to the problem exists and can be pointed to its owner is a huge shortcut). It could also enable more rapid, data-driven decisions by processing and analysing vast amounts of information in real-time. That's exactly what we're helping to do with Untrite tools.

This shift in decision-making capacity doesn't just make companies more efficient - it can make them more agile and responsive to market changes. However, for this to happen, we need a fundamental rethink of organisational structures and processes.

Quality leaps, not just efficiency gains

While efficiency gains are important and often easier to measure, AI's potential for qualitative improvements is often overlooked. AI can enable companies to deliver products and services that are not just cheaper or faster, but fundamentally better.

For example, AI could enable:

• More personalised products and services
• More accurate predictions and forecasts
• More comprehensive risk assessments
• More creative and innovative solutions

These qualitative improvements can be game-changers in competitive markets. They're not just about doing things better - they're about doing better things.

Making work more meaningful

As AI takes over more routine and repetitive tasks, it frees up human workers to focus on higher-level problems. This isn't about replacing workers; it's about shifting their focus onto something more meaningful.

But perhaps the biggest challenge in fully leveraging AI is not technological, but imaginative. It requires leaders to envision entirely new ways of operating, new products and services, and new forms of value creation.

This kind of imagination doesn't come easily, especially in established organisations with calcified ways of thinking. It requires tolerance for experimentation and failure and a long-term perspective that looks beyond immediate gains.

Leaders need to foster a culture of innovation and provide spaces for imaginative thinking about AI's potential. This might involve creating cross-functional teams, partnering with startups, or establishing internal "innovation labs" focused on exploring AI's transformative potential.

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The true AI revolution isn't about chatbots or automated data entry - it's great for the starter, but it's nowhere near utilising the true potential of such powerful tech. It's about fundamentally reimagining what's possible in business and beyond. Leaders who focus solely on cost-cutting and incremental improvements risk missing out on AI's transformative potential. And no-one should want to share the fate of Kodak or Blackberry.