Gartner Hype Cycle on AI

Nicely done overview, including the classic hype cycle of AI at the link.

Hype Cycle of AI In The Enterprise AI    By Svetlana Sicular  

We recently published for the wide audience that 2 Megatrends Dominate the Gartner Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, 2020.  Two megatrends – industrialization of AI platforms and democratization of AI – indicate that production workloads and high-scale AI applications are looming in the near future.  This means that AI will be reaching significantly more people via democratization of AI, and it requires industrialized platforms that accelerate and automate the AI development and implementations process to make AI accessible to the masses.

Let’s take a deeper look at industrialization of AI on the Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, 2020. The industrialization of AI platforms enables reusability, scalability and safety, which accelerate AI adoption and growth. If early AI adopters were mostly a grassroots and bottom up movement, the current AI wave is top-down. The C-suite are leading the charge in initiating AI projects now, with nearly 30% of the projects directed by CEOs. These projects aim to swiftly deliver value to the enterprise and catch up with the early adopters. That’s why the Machine Learning profile has already crossed into the Trough of Disillusionment: Simply mastering ML is not enough. The current wave expects AI tools to be on par with the enterprise production requirements and known processes, such as convenient AI development environments, automation of routine tasks, production stability and reliability.  .... 

(Hype Cycle of AI Here) 

Robots in the Boardroom

A place we experimented with, see a number of tags below for more.

Research by HBS, with a number of related topics, some examples:

Robots in the Boardroom    by Sean Silverthorne HBSWK

Understanding cloud technology was the No. 1 imperative for executives this decade. Next up: How does artificial intelligence change business and management?

Steamships, electricity, the railroad, airplanes, the internet—technology and business have always been intertwined. Now a new tech revolution is pushing forward as organizations figure out how to use artificial intelligence to help them make faster, smarter, and more productive decisions. This recent research from Harvard Business School faculty marks the possibilities and pitfalls that could occur along this digital transformation.... " 

A Good Place to Start
Ethics Bots and Other Ways to Move Your Code of Business Conduct Beyond Puffery
Digital technologies allow companies to create more effective codes of business conduct. But technology isn't the only answer.

Why Artificial Intelligence Isn't a Sure Thing to Increase Productivity
As companies adopt artificial intelligence to increase efficiency, are their employees skilled enough to use those technologies effectively?  ... "

Making Threat Intelligence Actionable

Worked with Recorded Future Early on.   One of my jobs was to translate threats to execs.   Here is the last piece of their threat intelligence outline for executives.  Really the most essential part, how do you communicate threats to decision makers?   Links to all of the pieces at the link below:

Making Threat Intelligence Actionable at the Executive Level (Part 3)
Recorded Future Team

This is the last blog in a three-part series discussing how threat intelligence information can be communicated to C-level executives and the board of directors. In our first blog, we examined the information that security teams need to compile and communicate. In our second blog, we presented the information that the C-suite and the board can glean in reaction to the threat intelligence provided by the security team.

This blog outlines how a threat intelligence solution helps CISOs present information in a way that executives can easily interpret and take action such that the company is prepared to defend against attacks targeting their IT assets and sensitive information.  ... " 

Getting Data to Drive Decisions

Some of the earliset work we did was to engineer ways we could get data to decision makers.  Visually if possible. And to groups of people that could formulate key decisions.    And get feed back to these same people/groups to tailor a decision, and track its outcome usefully.   There is still lots of work to do to link process, decisions and driving data and analytics.

Data Engineers: The C-Suite’s Savior       By Richa Dhanda in DataNami

Today’s competitive marketplace requires companies to be data-driven. Why? Because data has become the fuel for organizations to deliver better and faster decisions, quickly respond to customers, and analyze, understand and act on new opportunities (or threats) ahead of the competition. However, becoming a data-driven organization is not easy.  As highlighted in a recent Gartner report,  “despite massive investments in data and analytics initiatives, nearly 50% of organizations report difficulties in bringing them into production.”

That’s where data engineers come in. Their role is to help the company make the best use of data to accomplish business objectives. And, as demonstrated by a recent survey of Fortune 1,000 decision makers, this role is absolutely critical as established companies are being disrupted by technology-savvy new entrants.

Surveys say 80% of big data C-suite executives acknowledge the potential threats of technology disruption and displacement, yet only 7.3% of them feel confident that they were well-prepared for the future.  .... " 

Lifelong CEO Learning

For a while was responsible for answering questions from execs on technology, and connecting them to broader resources, this blog was part of that, but it does make sense to schedule learning more formally.  Even making sure the questions are formulated in a timely and useful manner is not a given.

Putting lifelong learning on the CEO agenda
By Amy Edmondson and Bror Saxberg in Mckinsey

In an open letter to business leaders, a Harvard Business School professor and a learning engineer at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative present an emphatic case to make learning a corporate priority.

If you are anything like most corporate leaders we know, you say (and mean) the right things when it comes to learning, such as “Our people are our most valuable asset, and their development is a top priority.” But if you are honest with yourself, you also know that your actions often emphasize financial over human capital, and you may leave it to individuals to find the learning opportunities they need. That worked, sort of, when people spent most of their time “doing” rather than “thinking,” “creating,” or “deciding.” .... " 

Quartz Guide to AI

 Appears to be a guide useful for the non technical executive.   Good definition of terms at the end.  Intriguing view of the recent progress of AI and why companies care.  Reviewing.

Quartz Guide to AI    Don't Fear the AI ...

The Quartz guide to artificial intelligence: What is it, why is it important, and should we be afraid?
What is artificial intelligence? Why is it important? Why is everyone talking about it all of a sudden? If you skim online headlines, you’ll likely read about how AI is powering Amazon and Google’s virtual assistants, or how it’s taking all the jobs (debatable), but not a good explanation of what it is (or whether the robots are going to take over). We’re here to help with this living document, a plain-English guide to AI that will be updated and refined as the field evolves and important concepts emerge.  ... " 

Advanced Analytics. Interviews with the C Suite

We had much experience in this area, delivering analytics to many executives.   It seems the connections have slipped in general.   It takes more than interviewing them, it takes ongoing connection and review of the goals, processes and the value propositions  involved

Advanced analytics: Nine insights from the C-suite
by Jit Kee Chin, Mikael Hagstroem, Ari Libarikian, and Khaled Rifai

Conversations with hundreds of business leaders reveal nine ways that they are—and are not—adapting to the analytics revolution.

Data and advanced analytics have arrived. The volume of available data is growing exponentially, with more added every day from billions of phones, sensors, payment systems, and cameras. Machine learning is becoming ubiquitous, but organizations are struggling to turn data into value.

The stakes are high. Those who advance furthest, fastest will have a significant competitive advantage; those who fall behind risk becoming irrelevant. Analytics cannot be the sole province of the chief information officer (CIO), as is sometimes the case. The CIO may not understand the business as a whole well enough to spot opportunities and threats, or be influential enough to ensure that the company addresses them appropriately. While the expertise the CIO brings is of course essential, business-unit leaders and CEOs must be in charge of analytics to accelerate the pace of change and to ensure intelligent investment. This is beginning to happen: McKinsey has found that more than 50 percent of CEOs consider themselves the primary leader of the analytics agenda, and that figure has been growing steadily.

With this in mind, we spoke to more than 300 top executives of major companies. Here we offer nine insights based on these conversations, and suggest actions for business leaders to take.  .... " 

Tech Changing the Job of the CEO

Remarking on the quote below, we consulted  directly with the C-Suite before execs had become used to using social communications, or even email with their employees.     So that is an opportunity today. Creative reward systems had not, and have still not caught up.

How technology is changing the job of the CEO   by Claudio Feser.
More than 75 chief executives and board chairs recently gathered to share concerns and offer one another advice.... "

Sent from McKinsey Insights .... 

" ... Technology provides new ways to listen to and engage with employees. “Lead with your ears, follow with your mouth,” as the CEO of one property company crisply put it, citing his father’s advice many years ago. One way of listening today is to crowdsource ideas, using digital-communications platforms. There was general agreement on the value of internal crowdsourcing to take advantage of knowledge on the factory floor and the front line. But Forum members acknowledged the challenge of finding an appropriate reward system for those who come up with new ideas—suggesting that this is another area where top-management attention is needed. ... " 

Agile in the C-Suite

In Bain & Company:

How to Make Agile Work for the C-Suite   By Eric Garton, Andy Noble

Many companies are attempting a radical — and often rapid — shift from hierarchical structures to more agile environments, in order to operate at the speed required by today’s competitive marketplace. Companies like ANZ, the Australian-based banking giant, have made explicit commitments to adopt agile principles, while others like Zappos, are on the bleeding edge of organizational transformation. Many stopping points exist along the continuum from hierarchy to holacracy. To successfully transform to a more agile enterprise, companies must make conscious choices about where and how to become agile. They have to decide where to adopt agile principles and mindsets, where to use agile problem-solving methodologies to dynamically address strategic and organizational challenges, and where to more formally deploy the full agile model, including self-managed teams.

At Bain & Company, we do not believe that companies should try to use agile methods everywhere. In many functional areas, such as plant maintenance, purchasing, sales calls, or accounting, more traditional structures and processes likely will deliver lower cost, more repeatable outcomes and more scalable organizations. Sorting through every function and every part of your company’s operating model to determine which parts of the agile playbook to adopt requires some deep thinking. It also means you have to figure out how to make the agile and traditional parts of your organization effectively operate with one another. This takes time. .... " 

SAP Pitches Strongly to C Level execs

In AdAge: Wasn't this always SAP's approach?  The specifics of a digital magazine, with strong content advertising follow up, appears to be new.  " ... SAP Launches Digital Magazine to Reach C-Level Execs  ... Digitalist Is Part of SAP's Expanding Content Marketing Strategy ... " 

Chief Analytics Officer

The Ultimate Big Data job?   I don't know many of these positions around.  The article does a good job in describing what they could be.  Also a look at the differences between Chief Data and Chief Analytics Officer,  but there is considerable overlap today in Big Data.   And how these roles might exist alongside the CIO.

Key would be a good interaction with corporate decision processes at a strategic and operational level.   Innovation in fast moving technologies in context also needs to be considered.  And in a services world an understanding of  technology that is available and how it is evolving.

If anyone wants to talk to me about developing this role, contact me.

Questions for the C-Suite

The earliest experiences I had with the global enterprise were working directly with the CEO.   He had built a system that ran on an early desktop, I helped with its expansion.   In that early work I learned that even back then the C-Suite cared about the direct use of computing power to help their decision making.  They also much cared about the data that would drive these systems.  There was a big gap in time before executives cared as much again.

IBM, as part of their Institute for Business Value asked a lot of executives about how they interacted with technologies. And also with each other about technology. And where they thought the opportunities and challenges existed.   This was the first attempt to study the entire C-Suite, and it was interesting to see how this fragmented with C Suite responsibilities. That had changed much since my first work with them.     ....  The scale was impressive:

" ... We now have data from more than 23,000 interviews stretching back to 2003.

Our latest study draws on input from:
Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) 884 Chief Finance Officers (CFOs) 576 Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) 342 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) 1,656 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) 524 Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) 201 ... " 

In an interesting aside, IBM's Watson AI system was used to analyze the interview data.  I look forward to hearing more about that.

It is a remarkable study.  Which also emphasizes the current opinions and their forecasts for the near future.  While it probably means most for the complexity of the large enterprise, it gives lessons to Mid Market firms as well.  In one paragraph they provide a good summary:

" ... How do you view the world?

CEOs consider technology the single most important external force shaping their organizations. Other CxOs also see it as one of the top three factors. The members of  the C-suite are likewise united in believing that an entirely new set of dynamics is emerging. 

Customers and citizens expect to be treated as individuals, which means knowing what makes each of us “tick”:  our values, beliefs, habits and quirks. That, in turn, requires much closer collaboration between organizations and  the people they serve.

Most CxOs recognize that what applies to customers  and citizens applies to employees and partners, too.  They envisage that organizational boundaries will become far more porous, enabling greater collaboration with employees and partners to accelerate innovation. They  also anticipate sourcing more of that innovation from outside. Where once an enterprise could go it alone, and  be successful doing so, it must now collaborate. .... " 

There is much detail beyond that, each using a small pie chart to indicate the changes over time.   I don't think the pies where necessary, but they were often joined by bar and time charts that indicated change that had occurred.

I attended the preview of the study, a good overview,  it would have been better to add a few case studies about C-Suite communications of data and responsibilities.   I was also surprised that little was said about funding, is it more of an issue in a world where we are automating more interactions?   How do changes in the economy change investment in digitization?   A nod to investment, which could have helped understanding how different size organizations would behave.

In particular I liked the statement about the future of these interactions:

" ... Pioneer digital-physical innovation:

The emergence of social, mobile and digital networks has played a big part in democratizing the relationship between organizations and their customers. It’s also forcing them to rethink how they work. Some 60 percent of CxOs now look to partners who will have an equal hand in creating business value (see Figure 4, foldout). And almost half are sourcing innovation from the outside .... "

Overall a good study.  provocative read.  You can get to the whole study (with registration) here.  

 Also , see their Android, IOS App: IBM IBV which covers the study and on Twitter:  @IBMIBV  I have found their stream quite interesting.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.  #MidsizeIBM