As new technologies like generative AI come to light, a predictable flurry of activity is seen from technology executives and their teams. The immediate objective? Identifying use-cases for quick wins. This strategy, aimed towards gaining early momentum and avoiding wasteful missteps, can be effective for specific point technologies. However, when it comes to general-purpose technologies like generative AI — a field with boundless potential across various domains and verticals — this approach can inadvertently restrict innovative thinking.
Use-cases are not Enough
Use-cases traditionally serve as the validated and proven models of a technology’s application — they offer the comfort of predictability in cost, timeline, and outcome. Yet, they can also obscure the wider vistas of opportunity that a ground-breaking technology like generative AI can unlock. Opportunities that can shape new competitive advantages, redefine operational efficiency, and enable superior leverage of our competencies in unexplored markets or segments.
In the early stages of any new technology, there are expected shortcomings — lack of performance, maturity, or robustness. However, innovative startups don’t wait for these shortcomings to be addressed. Instead, they strategize based on future potential, building their solutions with an eye toward the evolution of the technology. There are a few ways technology executives can get their organizations to address this:
✅ Apply Design Thinking
By integrating Design Thinking, companies can harness empathy and creativity to design unique applications of generative AI that target unmet user needs.
✅ Future Cast in your Business
Future Casting enables companies to predict technology trends and their impacts on their businesses, paving the way for long-term strategic investments in generative AI.
✅ Host Innovation Workshops
Through Innovation Workshops, businesses can foster cross-departmental collaboration, uncovering fresh perspectives on the application of generative AI across the organization.
✅ Sponsor Hackathons
By organizing internal Hackathons, companies stimulate rapid prototyping and encourage a culture of experimentation, leading to novel uses of generative AI.
✅ Learn from Startups
Engaging with startups, enterprises can gain valuable insights into new uses, agile and disruptive approaches towards leveraging generative AI, accelerating their own innovations.
Generative AI shows the potential of being a transformative technology with immense impact, one with the potential to redefine our expectations of technology in both our business and personal lives. To fully harness its capabilities, it’s vital to utilize a variety of both established and new tools, rather than merely focusing on traditional use-cases. So, which of these mechanisms have you implemented in your organization? Generative AI is still unfolding, and your unique approach might just help steer its course best suited for you.
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