It’s hard to escape the excitement around Generative AI and its potential to change humanity in fundamental ways. Analysts predict the value of Generative AI could be upwards of $10 trillion, with secondary and tertiary benefits estimated to be many times this value.
The promise of AI, along with the progress made in the 2010s in managing and analyzing large data sets (remember big data?), felt like a wave set to sweep through the business world. AI and data science quickly became boardroom agenda items. Now, with the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI technologies that can create new content in many areas, CEOs are under renewed pressure to evaluate and integrate these technologies into their company strategies enterprise-wide.
So, how should CEOs navigate these choppy waters amidst all this buzz?
In the last 12 months, Quantanite has engaged with a diverse group of fast-growing companies in retail, technical services, travel, and food delivery sectors to understand the opportunities and challenges of deploying Generative AI in the enterprise. This, combined with our own work and strategic explorations, has allowed us to see emerging patterns in how CEOs and their executive leadership teams are navigating this turbulent environment.
We present a summary of these findings below:
01 – Start From The Top
Our conversations with businesses show that CEOs need to be the sponsors of Generative AI projects and engagements in the company. CEO sponsorship clearly establishes the strategic priority of deploying Generative AI and helps with capital allocation decisions.
02 – Engage Early with Your Board
CEOs should share their strategic agenda on Generative AI with their boards and actively explore areas of risk. By presenting our own strategic initiatives in Generative AI for board scrutiny early in 2023, we established a capital allocation and decision framework that enables us to act with agility and speak with a common vocabulary.
03 – Develop a Vision but Start Small
Like anything new, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype. CEOs should formulate a clear vision of how Generative AI can add value to their business, but it’s vital to test that vision by starting small. Identify pilots or experiments to run in functional areas such as Human Resources, Marketing, or IT. These pilots should have well-defined scenarios (use cases) to implement Generative AI technologies, be quick to implement, and have clearly identified outcomes.
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04 – Be Outcome Oriented
What you want technology to deliver is one of the most critical questions to address. In Human Resources, Generative AI could reduce the cost per hire by making recruitment more efficient. Analyzing customer feedback data might improve satisfaction scores. Identifying the outcomes you want to achieve will allow you to measure the success of your pilots.
05 – Prepare for Implementation Challenges
Our experience with Generative AI, language, vision, and speech models underscores the preparation and rigor needed to take pilot projects to production. CEOs need to be ready to invest in improving internal skills, developing partnerships with other businesses and technology providers that can bring specialized skills that are costly to develop in-house, and thoroughly testing Generative AI applications. Rigorous testing for accuracy and relevance, incorporating company data into the AI platform, and establishing procedures to make Generative AI trustworthy and safe for users will require considerable finesse and technical maneuvering.
06 – Invest in Business Transformation and Change Management Skills
Generative AI can deeply and fundamentally alter how your HR, IT, or Customer Support functions operate. While these are early days, indications are that the depth of business transformation skills CEOs need to build in their companies can be significant. Developing cross-functional teams supported by strong change management and governance could be the difference between a failed pilot and a competitively transformed organization.
