⚔️What World War II can teach you about winning with AI
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This newsletter will take you about 4 minutes to read.
I. Spotlight: ⚔️What World War II can teach you about winning with AI
Which country do you think had the best tanks in World War 2? German tanks were the most feared. But, were they technologically the best?
“Not by a longshot,” says General James Mattis, the former US Secretary of Defense. He recently addressed students in a Stanford University class taught by Steve Blank.
General Mattis says that by 1939, the French had technically far superior tanks. They had much better armor and could outdo the German tanks in direct combat.
Yet, they didn’t produce the same results as the German war machines. Why?
It’s less about the technology and more about how we use it, says General Mattis. “The Germans put a radio in their tank to talk to a dive bomber overhead. And they trained their people - educated them to use initiative. And now they unleash what you and I call lightning war -blitzkrieg- across Europe in 1940.”
In the Battle of France, the French military’s setbacks were more due to suboptimal strategy, tactics, and organization rather than technology or design.
Today, we see striking parallels to this in the enterprise world.
There are organizations that innovate and build great technology solutions. Yet, they fail to integrate the technology into their strategy. They don’t coordinate technology-enabled execution across teams.
As a result, they squander the opportunity and miss capitalizing on their advantage.
Let’s say your team has created the best AI language model in the world. It can truly ‘understand’ what a piece of text means. It can detect not just sentiments but also sarcasm (which is a BIG deal for AI today).
How do you turn this technological marvel into a commercial success?
To make any difference, you must first apply the innovation to solve the right business problem. For example, this AI language model can help you understand your customer experience.
You can use it to find why customers leave, how to retain them, and what will increase your share of wallet. You must build it into your customer strategy. It is critical to integrate the solution with your Customer Relationship Management system.
You must train teams to be data literate - to read, write, and talk using data. Finally, you must undertake change management to help employees adopt the new solution.
In summary, to make the most of advanced technology like AI, you must:
Integrate the technology into your business workflow
Educate your organization on data literacy
Ensure your teams adopt the solution and use it for decision making
As many countries learned bitterly during the world war, it’s never about technology. It all boils down to how well you can integrate it.
II. Industry Roundup:
1. Big Data & AI Executive survey 2021: The state of the industry
25 minutes | New Vantage Partners | Randy Bean, Tom Davenport
This survey of industry leaders captures the rising investments, optimism, and outcomes from big data and AI. Yet, cultural resistance sticks out as a sore point offering the biggest resistance to AI. Read on for more insights.
2. Legal AI firm sued out of business over ownership of training data
2 minutes | ABA Journal | Lyle Moran
Here’s an early instance of a company getting into trouble due to the labeled data they used to train their legal AI model. It is unfortunate, but companies must take extra caution when building AI solutions using public or other third-party data sources.
3. Nine Free Data Science Books to start your 2021
5 minutes | Analytics Vidhya
Here’s a good collection of free books, mostly technical ones. If you’re looking for non-tech books, there’s one from O’Reilly, titled “Data Science for Business”.
III. From my Desk:
1. Article: When should you NOT invest in AI
6 minutes | Entrepreneur
AI is not a fit for every situation. Here are 5 situations where it pays NOT to use it. With examples, I show how you can evaluate whether your solution really needs AI.
2. Podcast: What are the top 3 AI trends for enterprisers in 2021?
22 minutes | Small World Big Data
In this freewheeling chat, we talk about what led to the AI winters and how you can succeed with AI. Find out why AI adoption is expected to accelerate in 2021.
3. Podcast: The 5 roles that every data science team must hire for
17 minutes | The Federal
You need a lot more than data scientists to build great solutions. With the analogy of home building, I explain the 5 roles & skills every team must hire.
Did you know that it was National Penguin Day yesterday? Here’s an excellent 2-min video by NowThis on our work to count penguins using AI.
Thank you for subscribing and reading the newsletter. I appreciate your attention,
Ganes.
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