AI

Riding the GenAI Wave

Demystifying GenAI: Part 1

“Businesses that successfully harness AI will be the ones to shape the future, while those that don’t will struggle to keep up.”

Fei-Fei Li (Co-Director of Stanford’s Human Centered AI Institute)

Leaders everywhere are hearing about how Generative AI is transforming the world of business.  Most, though, have their hands full delivering on their current strategy and a long list of commitments.  It’s critical, then, to ‘cut through the hype’, rapidly understand foundational GenAI capabilities, and assess their likely implications to your business.

Separating the Signal from the Noise…

There is an endless cycle of hype in the business world about the ‘next great innovation’, with media sources, consultants and vendors all incentivized to generate demand for their offerings.  While it can be tempting to ignore the constant buzz, the reason it’s so pervasive is that now and again a strategic inflection point comes along with the potential to disrupt industries, establish new leaders, and punish those slow to respond.  Like the migration to web-based commerce and the advent of SmartPhones, GenerativeAI represents a strategic inflection point that can significantly accelerate performance for early adopters and fast followers, or create existential headwinds for those slow to respond.

Understanding GenAI’s Core Proposition

The reason for all the excitement?  GenAI has the ability to:

      • Accelerate your top-line growth

      • Drive transformational operating margin improvements 

      • Deliver significantly improved customer experiences

      • ‘Supercharge’ workforce productivity

      • Help you consistently outperform your competition

    Assessing its Likely Impact on Your Industry & Business

    ‘Ubiquitous innovation’ is extremely rare – think the advent of electricity, automobiles, personal computing, the internet…  These innovations created new business models, drove huge leaps in productivity, and created many of the most valuable companies in the world.  GenAI is going to have a similar impact as companies embed its capabilities into their products, deliver personalized and interactive customer experiences, and engage and enable their workforce.  The specific implementations may vary by industry and business, but they will be broad-based and strategically significant.

    Gauging its Pace

    GenAI’s momentum is potentially its most striking attribute.  With >100MM users in its first 90 days, ChatGPT adoption rates exceeded anything we’ve ever seen.  That momentum is accelerating, with tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce all aggressively bringing GenAI-enabled solutions to market.  The pace is further augmented by 1,000’s of nimble smaller organizations producing pure-play GenAI solutions.  The bottom-line: GenAI is moving fast, and only accelerating…

    Evaluating Your Options

    As you work to assess GenAI’s potential importance for your business, you’ll need to quickly develop a clear point of view on its strategic relevance and implications for existing roadmaps.  While GenAI’s potential is clear and compelling, successful adoption will require focus, commitment, and institutional capacity, with trade-offs likely required across other strategic priorities. 

    What We’re Seeing in Practice

        • ‘Why the Face?’:  Many leaders feel a bit ‘blindsided’ by the pace and urgency of GenAI’s arrival on the scene. 

        • ‘Pulled in a Million Different Directions’:  While many leaders suspect ‘there’s something to all the AI buzz, they’re struggling to carve out enough time and mindshare to form a coherent perspective on it.

        • A Need for Leadership Team Alignment:  Given its strategic importance and likely implications to future roadmaps, leadership teams need to get and stay tightly aligned on the path forward with GenAI. 

        • Growing Investment:  Companies are ‘leaning in to’ GenAI in 2024, with material funding being prioritized to explore and scale GenAI adoption.

        • Significant GenAI Talent & Capability Gaps:  If you thought it was difficult to recruit Data Scientists to your business, just wait to try to recruit AI Engineers in 2024…  Virtually every organization has significant gaps in GenAI expertise and capabilities, and will need to prioritize rapidly closing both.

      Taking Action…

      To ‘Win with Generative AI’, you’ll need to take decisive action to understand its capabilities, develop an integrated GenAI strategy, and mobilize your organization around an actionable roadmap.

      This is the first of an integrated blog series from the Accelerated Innovation team entitled ‘Demystifying GenAI’, and is intended to serve as a straightforward, no-jargon resource for leaders looking to leverage GenAI to drive higher-performance across their business.  Please click below to explore the next 3 blogs in the series.

        To learn more about Accelerated Innovation’s end-to-end GenAI enablement services, or specific topics of interest, please get in touch to schedule a call and learn more about how we can help. 

        Follow us on LinkedIn to get alerts as our blog series are updated. 

        Defining Your GenAI 'True North' - A Closer Look

        Target Duration

        < 30 Days

        While success with GenAI will be a journey, in the early stages of adoption you’ll need to:

        • What’s all the buzz about, and what does it really mean for my business?
        • How fast do we need to move?
        • Do we have the talent to succeed with GenAI?
        • Can we explore GenAI without exposing the organization to unnecessary risks?
        • Where do we start?

        Understanding GenAI

        A targeted 2 – 3 hour executive workshop to help you:

          • Rapidly work up the GeAI learning curve
          • Understand its core capabilities
          • Explore its potential value for your business

         

        GenAI & Your Industry

        A custom GenAI Industry Report to ensure you understand key industry use cases and expected GenAI adoption rates.

        Assessing Your GenAI Readiness

        A targeted GenAI Readiness survey that will clearly measure your commitment to adopting GenAI and your high-level readiness across the five ‘Keys to Winning’.

        Defining a Clear & Compelling Vision to Win with GenAI

        A streamlined GenAI Vision development session, with applied examples, to collaboratively define your GenAI Vision in as little as 60 – 90 minutes. 

        Defining an Integrated GenAI Strategy & Roadmap - A Closer Look

        Target Duration

        30 - 60 Days
        (depending on leadership availability)

        While its potential is compelling, successfully leveraging GenAI will require an integrated approach and sustained collaboration across your company. Virtually every group will have a role to play, and you’ll need to:

        • Define an integrated strategy that solves multiple challenges in parallel
        • Solve for Secure & Responsible AI requirements from the start
        • Build momentum for GenAI adoption while closing foundational talent and capability gaps
        • Embrace iterative innovation and accelerated solution delivery
        • Enable aligned adaptability as ‘what great looks like’ rapidly evolves

        Accelerated Innovation has developed a streamlined GenAI strategy development solution that enables our clients to rapidly:

        • Align on a clear and actionable 12 – 18 month ‘Strategic Intent’
        • Define your specific ‘Keys to Winning’ with GenAI
        • Prioritize an integrated portfolio of initiatives, based on your specific needs
        • Identify ‘Quick Win’ opportunities
        • Define clear and aggressive measures of success
        • Identify and mitigate potential GenAI adoption risks
        • Define an actionable and adaptive GenAI Roadmap for accelerated results

         

        Igniting Your GenAI Journey - A Closer Look

        Target Duration

        1-2 Quarters

        While success with GenAI will be a journey, in the early stages of adoption you’ll need to:

        • Clearly communicate your GenAI vision and sustain energy and momentum for the change
        • Create a sandbox where team members can safely explore GenAI
        • Bring GenAI capabilities ‘to life’ for your teams with targeted solutions
        • Solve for a wide range of talent and capability gaps
        • Make sure you have the integrated insights to continually optimize your approach

        Accelerated Innovation specializes in enabling and maximizing the impact of your GenAI efforts.  Our integrated ‘GenAI Adoption Lift-off’ solution focuses on:

        • Amplifying your GenAI Message to build energy and commitment for the journey
        • Delivering a set of high visibility GenAI ‘Quick Wins’
        • Systematically solving for Secure & Responsible AI requirements
        • Enabling a cohort of GenAI Champions to lead your unique journey
        • Closing key capability gaps to securely and responsibly scale your GenAI efforts
        • Ensuring you have the data-driven insights needed for real-time decision making
        • Establishing a light-weight operating cadence to get aligned, stay aligned, and deliver high-impact results

        Accelerating Your GenAI Journey @ Scale - A Closer Look

        Target Duration

        Varied - depending on your specific scope

        GenAI’s real impact occurs when you scale and embed its capabilities within your organization’s ‘core DNA’. To do so, you’ll need to:

        • ‘Productize’ enterprise-class GenAI solutions
        • Streamline innovation and solution delivery across your business
        • Scale your GenAI Talent enablement efforts
        • Scale robust GenAI operations, security and compliance functions
        • Adopt GenAI-enabled productivity enablers across your workforce
        • Accelerate your organization’s operating cadence to compete in an AI-enabled competitive landscape

        Accelerated Innovation brings decades of strategic change enablement experience to help clients accelerate and scale their GenAI impact. Our integrated GenAI scaling solutions focus on:

        • End-to-End GenAI solution ‘productization’ and hardening
        • GenAI Innovation and Agile delivery optimization
        • Integrated Talent Enablement and Management, including:
          • Curated learning journeys for internal team members
          • Accelerated Talent Attraction 
          • Targeted 3rd Party Support where delivery pace is critical
        • Enterprise capability design, scaling, and optimization
        • Sustained GenAI transformation and risk management support
        • Scaled GenAI governance and compliance support

        Adapting to Outperform with GenAI - A Closer Look

        Target Duration

        1 - 2 Quarters
        (with on-going support as needed)

        The pace of business is only accelerating, and leaders everywhere are working to keep pace. To compete in a GenAI-enabled world, you’ll need to:

        • Leverage real-time insights for data-driven decision making across your business
        • Continually monitor 3rd Party GenAI innovation, competitor actions, and evolving regulatory mandates
        • Iteratively adapt your GenAI strategy, plans and tactics
        • Accelerate your innovation and delivery of GenAI-enabled solutions
        • Deliver improved top and bottom-line results to compete

        Enabling improved strategic adaptability is a core focus and passion for the Accelerated Innovation team. We partner with our clients to:

        • Architect integrated measurement strategies for improved real-time insights 
        • Leverage OKRs for increased clarity, alignment, focus and measurability across their GenAI efforts
        • Adopt quarterly Strategy and Planning cadences for improved alignment and adaptability
        • Embrace Outcome-based Roadmaps to clearly define their ‘True North’, while maintaining solution flexibility and pace

        Closing Targeted GenAI Gaps to Maximize your Impact - A Closer Look

        Target Duration

        Varied - based on your specific needs and scope

        Targeted gaps in GenAI talent and capabilities can significantly impact your results. Common challenges include (but are not limited):
        • Integrated GenAI Strategy
        • GenAI Talent Management
        • Master Data Management
        • GenAI Innovation Acceleration
        • GenAI Security
        • Adaptive Quarterly Planning
        • GenAI Architecture
        • GenAI Transformation Leadership
        • GenAI UX Design
        • GenAI Product Management
        • LLM Monitoring
        • GenAI Governance

        Accelerated Innovation offers targeted, custom solutions to close specific client GenAI gaps, including:

        • GenAI Vision, Strategy & Roadmaps
        • Packaged GenAI ‘Quick Wins’
        • Integrated GenAI Talent Management
        • GenAI Capability Design and Scaling
        • GenAI Innovation & Agile Solution Delivery
        • Integrated GenAI Transformation & Risk Management
        • Integrated GenAI Measurement & Insights solutions
        • Adaptive Strategy, Planning & Governance practices