Industry leaders in sports, entertainment, healthcare, consulting, and financial services are embracing data, AI, and cloud technologies in unprecedented ways. The Azure podcast ‘Leading the Shift’ captures their experiences and insights from the front lines of the AI platform shift. The first eight episodes reveal common themes among these leaders, including understanding the broad opportunities of generative AI, embracing experimentation, having a clear vision, building trust, and treating data as a strategic asset.
Key Insights from Leaders
Leaders understand that generative AI’s potential extends far beyond content creation. It can help organizations better discover, translate, and understand relationships among vast amounts of data. For instance, Shirli Zelcer, Chief Data and Technology Officer at Dentsu, notes that generative AI can connect the entire customer journey, making customer touchpoints more meaningful. Hiren Shukla from EY highlights its potential for ‘compressed innovation,’ enabling organizations to tap into previously unrecognized employee expertise.
Experimentation is Key
Experimentation is crucial when working with generative AI due to its probabilistic nature. Leaders like Perry Hewitt from data.org and Ade Famoti from Microsoft Research Accelerator emphasize the importance of being bold, experimenting, and incorporating AI into business processes in small, incremental ways. This approach helps build capacity and value with probabilistic technologies.
Clear Vision and Alignment
Successful leaders approach generative AI with a spirit of experimentation combined with rigor. They start with clarity about the problems they’re trying to solve. Charlie Rohlf from the NBA stresses the importance of explaining the ‘why’ behind projects to ensure everyone is aligned and working towards a better outcome.
Building Trust and Treating Data as a Strategic Asset
Trust is central to the adoption of emerging technologies. Leaders discuss the importance of being close to the problem, involving legal and governance teams early, and establishing strong data governance processes. Teresa Tung from Accenture advises treating data as a product to turn it into a strategic asset. Shirli Zelcer notes that generative AI can help combine and unlock the value of business data, providing more insights and predictive capabilities.
As Charlie Rohlf says, ‘We’re just scratching the surface on what this data is capable of doing.’ New episodes of ‘Leading the Shift’ will be released every two weeks on your preferred podcast platform. For more insights on how leaders are navigating the platform shift, listen to the full episodes and stay tuned for more.
