On this episode of The Smart IT Podcast, I welcomed Nick Maravich, an Innovation Consultant, to the show. We talked about how to approach and explore new technology capabilities for businesses. We discussed the culture and leadership needed to allow organizations to play in the "sandbox of possibilities",  experimenting with what A.I. can bring to the table. We discussed several insightful areas, including:

1. What's the big thing about AI and the line between hype and the real deal. The various opinions on AI based off your role/perspective.
2. Looking at businesses value streams, how your company makes money, what problems do you have that you want to resolve, and explore if AI an improve it. Don't just slap tech on as a fix.
3. "AI is a way to improve anything". For example with data exploration, how you did it in the past and see if you can find new insights;  or for new markets, run smart experiments to see if that market is real or does that it align with your pain/change thresholds from your current value streams.
4. When interacting with the business: give me your problems, let me make sure I understand them, then go and find if I can deliver on something relevant to them. What do you not have appetite for? What are the upper bounds of where you want to try?
5. Direct communication seems best when the spend is high and the risk is high. In in other times, often had to soften the message.
6. The "Phoenix Project" from Gene Kim is a must read for those in IT.
7. Be aware of the power of leadership and culture to kill the enthusiasm for emerging capabilities that you want to explore.
8. Organizations have to unlock their problem solvers. You want a culture of your teams waking up in the morning to solve problems. Need personal connections for all sides. All sides want to want to solve the problem. Will fail if you don't have people working together.
9. Have to be cognizant of the limitations of just presenting "the data". Some people can be imitated by a data scientist presenting numbers to them that seem overwhelming. Challenges of just using a "number" that is often requested instead of the variance to represent the uncertainty.
10. AI is a fun sandbox to experiment, a beacon for people to get unstuck. It can be thought of a soft form of corporate politics.
11. With AI, you are always on the look out the garbage and false or misleading outputs.
12. Decades ago, optimization was all about maximizing the good and minimizing the bad through linear programming.
13. Democratization of uses of AI. Comparison Googles Search.  A 15-year use case through Search for how generative AI has been adopted by some many, the door has been busted wide open.
14. AI is another layer on top. For example, with some data and a little programming, you can add another layer of AI generating multiple personas (e.g., CIO, CISO, QA Analyst , Marketing analyst) to explore same scenario or use cases to see if one should explore the following potential new market. That is here today. There is also agent to agent interface on AI models. And you have use cases leveraging model models concurrently. AIs talking to AIs based on specific business use cases.
15. You need a team to stay on top of all the AI has to offer.

Wrapping up, there are intelligent ways to experiment with AI without exposing your own data. Find the curious people in your organization and make it fun. It will generate lots of idea while safely exploring the possibilities of AI. With a little creative you can't lose by getting a team together who knows how to navigate the AI space. Organizations have to understand separation boundary between their business model and technology. IT. AI is a mirror to our society. In the beginning, during, and end, humans are always responsible for the outcomes of it actions.

#innovation #ai #experimentation

Show Notes Resources

Nick Maravich on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nmaravich/

William D. Reed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cciewill/

Smart IT info: https://www.williamreed.info

Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thesmartitpodcast

Podcast Homepage: https://the-smart-it-podcast.captivate.fm/