We live in a world where we are used to everything being delivered to us. The more we communicate our wants and desires the better the quality of the services we receive. Our appliances and solution providers know what we want, how and where we want it and they also know how much and when to send us more.

Why can’t innovation work the same way? Can we get help from machines to know what are the right problems to solve? Can we automatically receive ideas for that tough problem we are working on? Can we instantly gather research and expert advice on that concept we are developing just when we need it?

Organizations are trying to cast a wider net as they try to extend their innovation circle to include as many as sources as possible ranging from employees, customers, suppliers and partners to universities and the startup community. But the sheer volume of information that is now available is mind boggling. This data deluge has reached monumental figures with 90% of world’s data being generated over the last two years (Src1). At the same time our ability to leverage and make sense of this data is dismal with less than 1% of all customer data actually being analyzed (Src2). As the next image illustrates, AI forecasters are certainly predicting a lot of teamwork opportunities for humans and machines. As with other major revolutions, the nature of work itself will have to change to include this new form of collaboration. AI is in reality breaking down the work silos that have plagued and hampered an organization’s ability to innovate cross functionally by making all information accessible to all and instantly sharable for everyone to benefit from.

Innovation Evolution AI Forecast

AI can help us innovate more effectively not only by taking advantage of the information that is all around us but also overcoming some of our human limitations. Humans have inherent limitations and by nature bring certain biases that marginalize and restrict innovation. Now with AI organizations can remove those blinders by greatly simplifying the research, collection and analysis of big data sets that go beyond human capabilities and then present this information to the humans who have the human touch and the business sense to take the right actions.

As the next diagram demonstrates, the exponential growth of computing has reached the tipping point. There is still a journey ahead of us as in the race to technological singularity eventually leading to a machine surpassing the intelligence of the entire human race, but the time has now arrived for humans to further relinquish some of these tasks to machines who are better capable of being our partners and do the heavy lifting for data analysis while we continue to sharpen our business prowess and acumen to take advantage of this information and thrive in the new AI economy.

Innovation Evolution Exponential Growth Computing

Source: http://www.singularity.com/charts/page70.html

Planbox is taking on this new challenge with AI-Powered with Self-Driving Innovation to help our clients instantly skyrocket their innovation efforts as though they have suddenly gained access to new powerful resources who can autonomously collect, research, analyze and present the information they are looking for.

The advent of AI means future is now to strike the right balance of human and machine collaboration. To break down the silos and to innovate man and machine have to come together to more predictably leverage all of the information that is out there.

Our machines are ready to get to work, how about you?

Source1: Petter Bae Brandtzæg of SINTEF ICT
Source 2: IDC