In over 20 years, when running innovation and idea workshops, the apparent ideas often already exist come out first. Finding real innovation or unique ideas needs a chaotic mindset and often an approach that iterates in unforeseen ways. Data and insights alone have rarely, if ever, led to finding the eye-opening moments that make significant success stories. Most ideas are a tiny step above business as usual. Most innovative tech is used for old-fashioned activities. AI already looks very similar.
The recent drop in ChatGPT activity likely indicates the same cycle of underuse and under-innovation that has happened to other technologies. What does that mean for organisations?
It means two things to consider:
Yes, AI could automate and improve many of your ‘boring’ and repetitive activities. If they are individual tasks, they often don’t hold as much benefit as they could because they sit in a context or within a process that still slows them down, denying the benefits AI could have. This means AI should never be considered by itself. The real benefits come when 2–3 steps are connected and combined. A chain of our journey design for processes shapes a new service that can be considered a product to be monetised. Amazon has a long history of building helpful tools for their company and selling them to their partners and clients.
Product innovators or service designers are the types that can take a service segment and look at the business opportunities surrounding one piece of automation to turn it into a marketable product.
Secondly, understanding and learning the detailed possibilities of AI tools needs time, but that knowledge can create exponential and extraordinary value. Most organisations will use AI for obvious benefits like rapid content creation. Both texts and images created will look like whatever everyone else is creating. It is commoditised before it has even spread. Within any industry, the big players will likely integrate AI to the level they use Microsoft Teams. There is no competitive advantage in this. A dedicated special project team could look at industry-specific needs and spend time tuning AI to truly innovate. Organisations that can invest in these skills and explorations can genuinely step forward beyond the obvious commoditised usage.
In simple terms, if you want to become an AI leader in your industry, you need to combine AI with creative thinking to find and develop ideas and bend the tools to fit for purpose.
Epilogue:
Like any other technology, AI alone is boring and will not catapult you unless you put smart people of different mindsets around it. Yes, you must invest and use it to some extent, but understanding the context is king if you want to build value around it. To challenge your competition, you must get creative and invest in learning AI tools’ deeper potential and features. Everyone will do the obvious if they haven’t already.
Which approach are you taking?
#Exciting times ahead!
#teamops