AI is a tool, not a strategy
Creating urgency and agency in developing AI enhanced products
Everyone I know is fascinated by AI. Engineers seek to work on AI projects, Product Managers want to integrate AI into different features, leaders seek suitable frameworks for AI adoption, and CEOs worry about AI risks. These diverse priorities is making it challenging for teams to accelerate AI adoption with speed and sense of urgency.
I recently tuned in to a podcast where an Executive from an established corporate mentioned that they were waiting for their CEO to share the AI strategy for their business.
This prompted me to consider writing this piece. AI adoption isn’t solely a top-down approach. If you are awaiting direction from your leaders to pave the way for AI, you risk missing out on market opportunities.
I suggest that product and engineering teams follow the four part framework to simultaneously accelerate AI integration at different levels
- Teams that already use AI
- AI for optimization
- AI for innovation
- AI for the future of the business.
I have shared case studies to provide contextual relevance on how I adopted this framework in my current organization at Metadata, where we are building a Marketing platform for B2B Marketers to launch campaigns on Social media channels. We approached integrating AI into the product across the four pillars shared in this framework.
Teams that already use AI — Leverage as Benchmark
AI isn’t a novelty in the industry. AI has been part of the technology landscape for years. The teams that are already immersed in AI-driven product development, should be used as a benchmark “golden team” for accelerating AI adoption in other parts of the organization.
The golden teams are trusted sources for learning how to assemble AI-capable teams, understanding processes, tools, and best practices, and also learning from their setbacks. Also, leverage developers from the “golden team” as mentors and champions in laying the foundation for new AI-enabled teams.
AI for Optimization — Rapid Decentralized Execution
Every product offers numerous avenues for integrating AI to eliminate human tasks. It is important to encourage Product Managers and Engineers to think about how they can optimize or enhance user experience using AI. Start with small proof of concepts and test it with customers. Keep iterating and move fast.
In one of Metadata’s product lines, marketers build target audiences before they launch campaigns on social media. The workflow involves the user providing extensive information about their audience to create their Ideal Customer Profile. The user spends more than half an hour in this workflow before they are ready to launch campaigns. Our team leveraged this as a prime opportunity for enhancing user experience through AI.
The team that worked on introducing AI in this use case did not have a top down direction or a strategic mandate to enhance user experience, they were solely driven by curiosity towards how they can use AI to reduce time that users spend in the audience creation workflow. The Product Manager, Engineer and Designer came together to build an MVP by leveraging AI into the audience creation workflow. The customers can now build an audience in roughly one third of the time with the support of AI and it turns out to be one of the much appreciated features by our customers.
AI for innovation — Thoughtful Product driven direction
In this context, having a clear strategy is key. So, where do you start?
Diagnosis: Begin by pinpointing a specific problem that AI can help solve or an opportunity that AI can capitalize on.
Guiding Policy: Then, create a plan outlining how to address the problem or seize the opportunity using AI.
Set of coherent actions: Each plan should include a set of actions, like tasks in JIRA, to be completed within a designated time frame.
Validate and Test: Test the idea with customers.
I would like to cite how we addressed AI for innovation at Metadata. Marketers invest a lot of time in crafting campaigns, where the text and visuals are crucial for the success of the campaign. We recognized there is an opportunity to use AI to generate content for marketers, thus giving them the ability to choose from a wide set of text and visual elements for their campaigns.
This required a strategic approach. We needed to define the problem, decide which tools or platforms to use to generate content and images, figure out how to test and validate the AI-generated content, and address any potential issues or limitations. It needed a thorough research about the choices, different iterations of the product, validating the solutions and how best to monetize the innovation. This could not have been done with a tactical collaboration between members of a team, it required a strategic overall outlook on how to leverage AI for innovation.
AI for the future of the business — Vision defined by Leadership
This is the only area where it is important for the top leadership to provide clear guidance. This means having a vision set by the founder or CEO about how AI will shape the future of the business. Since these decisions are big and often hard to reverse, it needs careful thought about how these decisions will impact the business down the line. This includes doing thorough market research, looking at competitors, figuring out product pricing strategy, and maybe even changing how the organization is structured to deliver to the new vision.
How do we rate urgency and agency across four pillars of AI acceleration?
Encourage your teams to act fast and take charge in using AI to improve user experience. Set up regular meetings where teams can share how they’re using AI to make things better for users. This helps spread ideas and creates inherent motivation among teams. Teams should feel a strong push to use AI to offer better user experience.
Create strong strategies on how to use AI for innovation. Let Product Managers explore how AI can bring new features to their products, even ones outside the usual scope. When leveraging AI for new areas of innovation, think before you act, but move fast.
Take ownership of integrating AI into our products. Move fast, deliver value and capture market.
