
First of all, I wrote this myself in 45 minutes, jacked-up on 2 double-espressos on a fresh Sunday morning in Finland. Not bad compared to the response times of ChatGPT as it seeks to keep up with the millions of requests which can slow it down at certain times, depending on which part of the pale blue dot you're sitting on.
Now to the conundrum. For decades (centuries?) great talent and ideas have been entombed in silos, spread across complex organisational structures, sometimes empowered by measurements and targets, though often suppressed unintentionally.
Since November 30th all bets are off. Or rather on. Individuals and diverse teams have been turbo-charged, not by their own organisations deploying a wonder technology, but by embracing it themselves and relating it to their own jobs, as well as opportunities to short-circuit other ones.
Now, commercial and public organisations of all shapes and sizes are in a race to understand the utility and risk of generative AI as it seeps into every inch of the business or public service.
Compelling stuff.
Some are in resistance mode, expressing doubts that in some use cases ChatGPT is just parroting text. My response to that is, "how many speeches and workshops have you sat through filled with buzzword bingo and a distinct lack of original thought?" Rhetorical...
At least with ChatGPT you can get it to regenerate another answer in 30 seconds or less. Imagine if you could hit that regenerate button in the middle of a speech or workshop if you didn't like the way it was going!
This last week I was in Sweden visiting clients and it was exciting to discuss with them opportunities for collaboration with these generative AIs. I work with European research and commercial organisations to accelerate research into commercial usage, or public service in the case of healthcare and smart cities. We now have the ability to rapidly accelerate that big chunk of the innovation process, otherwise known as ideation.
In parallel, I started deep-diving into the new must-have business skill known as Prompt Engineering. Thanks to a wide array of generous YouTubers, the hidden arts of conversing effectively with ChatGPT are being rapidly spread inside the digital dojo.
Getting consensus and combining elements on ideas from across the scientific and commercial organisations is about to get a significant boost in productivity. Disintermediation (buzzword bingo circa last couple of decades) will this year come into its own, as time to markets get cut in half. If not by your organisation, then someone else will jump in ahead of you.
Core competencies and strategies will get revised in real-time as organisations, made up of individuals deploying ChatGPT and other AI's off their own initiatives, will seek to corral everything that's going on.
This will become easier once these generative AI's become baked into enterprise productivity tools, enabling IT departments and Executive teams to get a handle on costs, IP, data privacy etc. But many will struggle to keep up with the overlapping waves of external entrepreneurs diving into their core business with significantly less overhead. I hinted at this in a recent YouTube on my Nordic Bridge channel.
But in those very organisations, individuals will also begin to yield more entrepreneurial power, circumnavigating tired old processes and gatekeepers to drive new value into existing and adjacent markets.
And this will be supercharged by HR, or People & Culture departments, who will be recruiting new employees already used to ChatGPT and other generative AI's in the execution of their jobs.
As we roll through February of '23 towards spring, the gap between curiosity and investigating then realising, monetisable commercial products and services, or valuable public services, will be radically compressed. Critical paths on project schedules will get rewired, driven by massive productivity improvements.
Throughout this process traditional-minded operators, especially in the commercial space may seek to shut the barn door after the horse has bolted, citing the need for long studies and careful consideration. I would recommend accelerating targets by at least 50%. You could also try using ChatGPT to help move it along faster.
Scott Galloway just published a great blog on the Luddites and AI...well worth 5 minutes of your time.
And so we come back to the rub of this business fable. Curiosity, injected with generative AI, will rapidly begin to close the gap between ideas and implementation.
That cat didn't get killed...it just got promoted...
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