Embracing AI innovation

How can you embrace AI innovation at your organization?

It’s been an inspiring three days of AI immersion at hashtag#FutureFestival.

Here are my top 6 takeaways for leaders:

🔹 Companies actively embracing AI will have a tremendous advantage over those who don’t. If your organization is not aggressively developing AI objectives, strategies, goals and measures – the time is now!

🔹 AI is not "just for coders". It’s critical that leaders and employees understand that AI is not coming for their job, but people who know how to use AI are. Everyone - regardless of industry, function and level - should prioritize accelerating their AI learning and experimenting with AI tools.

🔹 Just get started! The best way to combat the feeling of overwhelm about AI is by starting to play with it. Subscribe to AI podcasts, read articles about the latest tools, and play, play, play. Encourage your team to do the same! The more you know about AI, the more you’ll want to know – which will create a virtuous cycle of upleveling and empowerment.

🔹 Choose a focus area. Before you or your team dives into AI tools, make sure you know what problem you are trying to solve with AI. Does it make sense for the job to be done? If you don’t know where to start, explore ways to leverage AI to automate repetitive parts of jobs within your organization that people don’t like to do. The positive impact will immediately be felt and will help to secure buy-in for further AI innovation efforts.

🔹 A healthy level of skepticism is a good thing. The early tools will continue to evolve – and, as with a google search, don’t assume every output is automatically accurate. It’s important to exercise human judgement. Further, leaders should establish clear guardrails to ensure security and privacy of confidential information and intellectual property – and employees should ensure they are aware of these before they experiment.

🔹 View AI innovation as a key retention tool. The people who want to learn and experiment with AI are very likely the most hungry and ambitious on your team. If they’re not able to do so at your company, they’ll look for other workplaces where they can.