The Evolving Importance of the Chief Innovation Officer
In a world of Artificial Intelligence, the role of Chief Innovation Officer is becoming even more important. This link (between Artificial Intelligence and the importance of the CINO role) may not be that obvious, so let me explain the thinking:
Artificial Intelligence is entering into every aspect of human life and especially in our professional and business worlds. The impact on the way businesses operate is going to be massive (and it is coming shortly).
The organizational structures of the typical corporation will soon start to get simpler and various roles will be eliminated or merged into new ones (Technological Unemployment is definitely a major concern: check this article).
As AI will be streamlining and accelerating various tasks, teams will shrink in size and companies will become smaller in terms of Full-time employees.
With the assistance of Artificial Intelligence, a vast number of activities - primarily the digitized ones - will be performed at a fraction of time and effort. To give a sense of the impact, for certain tasks AI will be able to deliver results in minutes (literally) versus days or even months that a human professional (or a team of) would need.
Consider for example activities like documentation of a process or a system, or content creation for marketing purposes or content understanding and summarization – such as literature research, market/ competition scanning etc. In all these cases, AI is taking the lead and reducing dramatically the effort needed to perform them – while delivering good enough or, in some cases, even better results (compared to human professionals).
But even for creative activities (that until very recently we thought they were future proof and safe), AI is now is becoming superior to humans: Artificial intelligence can now design, visualize, write code, debug software systems and even generate business ideas and compile business plans! And all these in an impressive manner (and in seconds or minutes).
Moreover, as AI is becoming smarter in mathematical reasoning, the impact on business management will be dramatic: When a company connects a modern AI system to its data repositories – e.g. a Datawarehouse and its Business Intelligence infrastructures, Artificial Intelligence will be able to ‘comprehend’ the vast amounts of data that are typically there and start spotting opportunities, issues, macro trends and other correlations between internal corporate data and the broader ecosystem, globally. It is difficult to conceive how such a scenario will impact the operational system of a company and what the cascading impact at the market level will be.
In 2020 in the ending notes of The Innovation Mode, I described the corporation of the future as a platform for innovation. More specifically …
“… . In a fully digitized environment, powered by Artificial Intelligence, operational aspects get streamlined, efficient and eventually fully automated. The distinct parts of the organization connect to a digital backbone in real-time, forming a ‘living entity’ that captures signals from its environment, consumes information, decides and reacts. In this environment, the focus shifts from running the business to pursuing opportunities. In the organization of the future, effective leadership will be about directing and fine-tuning the innovation machine, a complex system that converts signals to ideas and then opportunities to realized innovation; in a fast, adaptive way. In this system, humans will play a substantial role in forming opportunities through business creativity – one of the few areas that AI hasn’t outperformed us, yet.”
This AI future is here. As the typical operations and internal functions of a corporation become streamlined, automated and easy to clone and replicate from any company, innovation will become even more important: Companies will have to invest in their ability to conceive, validate and pursue new opportunities fast and at scale. They will need an opportunity discovery function – an advanced innovation framework – that is itself powered by AI but also from talented humans - innovation leaders who make smart decisions, experiment with new products, services and ideas, continually.
And this is where the Chief Innovation Officer comes into play: A critical role that orchestrates the innovation function and empowers the company to discover opportunities, experiment fast and make the right calls for taking high-potential, validated products and services to the market.
We are entering the era of continuous innovation led by the Chief Innovation Officer. This role will play a critical role in the age of AI, and the corresponding skillsets (of course, adapted as ‘powered by AI’) will be in high-demand, for every corporation.
