This podcast discusses the skills and capabilities that strategists, marketers, and insight professionals will need to develop to stay relevant as AI becomes more advanced.
The Marketing Society member Adam Riley is the founder of marketing insight consultancy Decision Architecture Limited and is joined by David Smith, Director of Insight Consultancy DVL Smith and also a Professor at the University of Hertfordshire Business School.
Adam and David introduce 7 "power skills" that will be critical to staying relevant as AI becomes more advanced.
In this episode they discuss the next 3 "power skills" needed to thrive in an AI-powered world: creativity, storytelling, and foresight.
For creativity, AI will provide a "first draft" that humans can then build on with creative prompts and nudges to reach true creative insight.
With storytelling, humans must move beyond telling stories to transmitting powerful psychological messages that tap into emotions. AI can help craft stories, but humans provide the empathy.
Foresight involves "virtual time travel" - not just forecasting but imagining desired futures. Humans can envision scenarios in a way AI currently cannot.
AI will get strategists and marketers to "first base" with data analysis, but they need these skills to make the leaps AI cannot yet make.
The skills discussed so far are: critical thinking, sensemaking, creativity, storytelling, and foresight.
Still to come in the final episode are inspiring and decision making, and thoughts on applying these skills going forward.
Bio's
Adam Riley founded marketing insight consultancy Decision Architecture Limited in 2006. His 25-year-plus career has spanned market research agencies, client-side roles and management consultancy. Adam joined TN-AGB in the early nineties, before moving to RSL in its embryonic international research team. After an MBA at The London Business School, he joined Samsung in South Korea, as a Global Marketing Strategist, before moving back to London and becoming a senior member of the marketing strategy practice of Monitor Company (now part of Deloitte).
David Smith is a Director of Insight Consultancy DVL Smith, which he founded in the 1980s. He is also a Professor at the University of Hertfordshire Business School. He holds a PhD in Organisational Psychology from the University of London and is a Graduate Member of the British Psychological Society. He is a former Vice President of ESOMAR, a Fellow and former Chairman of the UK Market Research Society (MRS), a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and also a Fellow of the Institute of Consulting.
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