If you feel your organization is a laggard with artificial intelligence, don’t feel bad — it turns out everyone else is struggling with it too. AI may be the talk of the town these days, but it’s only just getting out of the starting gate at most companies.
The question is, will AI remain in the labs while the industry moves on to the next technology trend, or will it become the revolutionary force some are predicting? Read More
Tag Archives: AI First
Essential Guide to AI Product Management
In this post when I use the term AI product management (APM), I mean to include both AI and ML (which is technically more accurate). I believe that AI PM is a key role and needs specific skills, judgement and experience that are critical to success of AI products and initiatives.
As a practicing APM and organizer of a successful AI Meetup, I wanted to share useful resources, best practices and tips that I came across and learned from my experience. The principles and tips here are also useful for project managers, software managers and any role where you make decisions for technology teams. I do not spend time talking about the basics of AI here as I assume you already have that background. However there are references at the end if you want to learn about ML or if you want to know more about PM role. Read More
Wanna Build an AI-powered Organization? Start by Getting EVERYONE to “Think Like A Data Scientist”
In a recent blog I stated that “Crossing the AI Chasm” is primarily an organizational and cultural challenge, not a technology challenge. That “Crossing the AI Chasm” not only requires organizational buy-in, but more importantly, necessitates creating a culture of adoption and continuous learning fueled at the front-lines of customer and/or operational engagement (see Figure 1).
A recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) article “Building the AI-Powered Organization” agrees that despite the promise of AI, many organizations’ efforts with it are falling short because of a failure by senior management to rewire the organization from the bottom up. Read More
When Data Creates Competitive Advantage
Many executives and investors assume that it’s possible to use customer-data capabilities to gain an unbeatable competitive edge. The more customers you have, the more data you can gather, and that data, when analyzed with machine-learning tools, allows you to offer a better product that attracts more customers. You can then collect even more data and eventually marginalize your competitors in the same way that businesses with sizable network effects do. Or so the thinking goes. More often than not, this assumption is wrong. In most instances people grossly overestimate the advantage that data confers. en Data Creates Competitive Advantage.
The virtuous cycles generated by data-enabled learning may look similar to those of regular network effects, wherein an offering—like a social media platform—becomes more valuable as more people use it and ultimately garners a critical mass of users that shuts out competitors. But in practice regular network effects last longer and tend to be more powerful. To establish the strongest competitive position, you need them and data-enabled learning. However, few companies are able to develop both. Nevertheless under the right conditions customer-generated data can help you build competitive defenses, even if network effects aren’t present. In this article we’ll walk you through what those conditions are and explain how to evaluate whether they apply to your business. Read More
How artificial intelligence and data add value to businesses
Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the cutting edge of innovation. But how do companies find the expertise necessary to utilize it, and then take it to market? In this video, recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June, Andrew Ng, cofounder of Coursera, AI Fund, and Landing.AI, discusses the difference between an AI-enabled business versus a true AI company, and how businesses can organize, hire, and make use of AI to add value. Read More
Creating an AI-First Business with Andrew Ng
Artificial General Intelligence won’t be with us for at least another 100 years, but former Baidu chief scientist and Google Brain cofounder Andrew Ng argues that AI will radically alter most industries within the coming decades. Ng joins Azeem Azhar to discuss the progress of AI and how it’s altering businesses and the future of work. Read More
How to Develop Your Own AI Playbook
Video: Andrew Ng, in discussion with MIT Technology Review’s Will Knight, closes EmTech Digital with advice on how to chart your own path forward in the AI Era. Read More
Will AI-First Strategy Give a Company a Sustainable Competitive Advantage?
Despite Their Huge Upside Potential, Why Do Most Platforms Fail?
“For anyone who follows the world of business, it is now common knowledge that the most valuable firms on the planet and the first companies to surpass the trillion-dollar mark in value (albeit temporarily) are platforms,” Michael Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer and David Yoffie write in their recently published book “The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power.” In a list of more than 200 startups with valuations of $1 billion or more, they estimated that platforms made up between 60% and 70%.
What do we mean by platform? The book offers a simple definition. “Platforms, in general, connect individuals and organizations for a common purpose or to share a common resource.” Read More
How to tell if your industry is ready for platform transformation
Platform strategy is sweeping through the business landscape, upending industries as companies adopt a business model based on enabling interactions between external producers and consumers. Companies like Airbnb, Uber, YouTube, Amazon, and Facebook have set the model for platform economies, with competing companies scrambling to catch up.
Not all industries have been affected equally, however. Retail executives and journalists have seen their industries transform rapidly, while airplane engineers and heart surgeons have not.
Platform transformations work best in industries with precise output, low regulation, and spare capacity. Read More
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