Well, ready or not, it’s here. The AI revolution is upon us, and we can either act accordingly and adapt, or turn our course towards the dust bin of history. It’s happening fast, too. I’m reading from multiple authorities on the subject that if you’re not fully taking advantage of AI in five years, your competitors most definitely will, meaning you’ll struggle to compete.
Let’s explore the three stages of incorporating AI for competitive advantage, what you need to do to prepare, and how you should examine if your leadership, culture and strategy are fully aligned and optimized for this new world order.
What we’re seeing today is primarily the first stage, AI Adoptive companies, and with your more sophisticated companies operating in advanced industries, the initiation of the second stage, AI Enabled.
An AI Adoptive company is using AI in the most simplest of applications, e.g., for writing marketing copy, customer service (a terrible application, by the way), or other rather rudimentary tasks. It doesn’t take much to accomplish this, as it tends to focus on replacing people rather than augmenting people engaged in complex tasks.
In terms of Cultural Maturity, you’ll see this form of adoption pretty much across the board. Companies need not be Collaborative, Innovative or Thriving in order to accomplish this adoption. It’s also transactional, meaning it isn’t strategic. The cursory adoption of AI isn’t going to deliver much more than some budgetary savings and a disengaged workforce waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The second stage is that of AI Enabled companies. The Cultural Maturity necessary for companies to take this step falls squarely into the Collaborative phase and above. We see this in medical device companies that are incorporating AI as a feature and potential benefit within their devices. An example would be a monitoring device that gathers data for complex analytics. AI can identify critical, early warning signals…subtle signals below or between what we can detect today. Things the naked human eye, the listening ear, or the calculating mind, cannot fathom. This will help usher in evidence-based care and, over time, promises to help contain the cost of healthcare. To accomplish this, every discipline in the company, from engineering to quality, from marketing to regulatory, must be highly coordinated and collaborative.
The third stage of application is becoming an AI Agile company. Here, you will see companies using AI to optimize and align the very value-generating operations of the organization, imparting a dynamic and anticipatory flexibility to rapidly changing economic conditions. No longer responsive, but anticipatory…I wish to emphasize this point; anticipatory. And not just what we’re working on, but how we’re working and organizing ourselves to work.
This “agility” requires a Culturally Mature (Innovative to Thriving) organization in order to realize its full potential. You’re no longer using AI to just innovate your products, you’re now using AI to innovate your business. This is where Human/Machine Teaming evolves to be the critical driving force for value generation; for your customers, for your employees, for your shareholders and your stakeholders.
This is where we can help. We have the tools, people and processes to help your company prepare to fully leverage your AI-driven, continuous, competitive advantage. To learn more, please feel free to get in touch! Happy Thanksgiving!
© 2024, Terry Murray.
Comentarios