In recent years, some of the world's fastest growing companies have been implementing artificial intelligence (AI) to solve specific business problems. Microsoft conducted a study to understand how AI will impact business leadership and found that fast-growing companies are more than twice as likely to actively adopt AI than slower-growing companies.
Moreover, fast-growing companies are already using AI much more actively, and about half of them plan to increase the use of AI in the coming year to improve their decision-making processes. Among companies with slow growth, only one in three has such plans. But how , even among high-growth companies, only one in five integrates AI into their operations.
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“There is a gap between people's intentions and the actual state of affairs in their organizations, the readiness of these organizations,” says Mitra Azizirad, Microsoft's corporate vice president of AI marketing.
“Developing a strategy for AI goes beyond business issues,” explains Mitra. “To prepare an organization for the implementation of AI, organizational skills, competence and means are needed.”
On the way to developing such strategies, top managers and other business leaders often stumble over questions: how and where to start implementing AI in a company, what changes in the company culture are needed for this, how to create and use AI responsibly, safely, protecting privacy, respecting laws and regulations?
Azizirad and her team are launching the Microsoft AI Business School today to help business leaders understand these issues. The free online course is a series of workshops designed to give managers the confidence to take action in the age of AI.
Focus on strategy, culture and responsibility
Business School course materials include quick start guides and case studies, as well as videotapes of lectures and talks that busy executives can refer to when they have time. A series of short introductory videos provides an overview of AI technologies driving change in all industries, but the bulk of the content focuses on managing the impact of AI on company strategy, culture and responsibility.
“This school will give you a deep understanding of how to strategize and find obstacles before they prevent you from implementing AI in your organization,” says Azizirad.
New business school complements other Microsoft AI training initiatives, including one focused on developers AI School and (Microsoft Professional Program for Artificial Intelligence), which provides real work experience, knowledge and skills necessary for engineers and in general for everyone who wants to improve their skills in the field of AI and data processing.
Azizirad says that the new business school, unlike other initiatives, is not focused on technical specialists, but on training leaders to manage organizations in the transition to AI.
Analyst Nick McQuire, who writes smart technology reviews for , says that more than 50% of the companies surveyed by his firm are already researching, testing or implementing custom projects based on AI and machine learning, but very few are using AI throughout their organization and are looking for business opportunities and challenges related to AI.
“This is because the business community does not fully understand what AI is, what its capabilities are, and, finally, how it can be applied,” says McQuire. "Microsoft is trying to fill that gap."
Mitra Azizirad, Vice President. Photo: Microsoft.
Learning by example
, an MBA with campuses in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, has partnered with Microsoft to develop the AI Business School Strategy Module, drawing on the experiences of companies across industries that have successfully transformed their business with AI.
For example, Jabil's experience shows how one of the world's largest manufacturing solution providers was able to reduce overhead and improve the quality of its production line by using AI to inspect electronic parts as they are being made, allowing employees to focus on other tasks that machines can't.
“There is still a lot of work that needs human capital, especially in processes that cannot be standardized,” explained Gary Cantrell, Jabil Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer.
Cantrell added that the key to AI adoption was leadership's commitment to explain to employees what the company's strategy for AI is: eliminate routine, repetitive activities so people can focus on what can't be automated.
“If the employees themselves guessed and made assumptions, then at some point it would begin to interfere with the work,” he said. “The better you explain to your team what you are aiming for, the more efficient and faster the implementation will go.”
Nurturing a Culture for the Transition to AI
The Microsoft AI Business School Culture and Responsibility modules focus on data. As Azizirad explained, in order to successfully apply AI, companies need open communication between departments and business functions, and all employees need the opportunity to participate in the development and implementation of AI applications that process data.
“You need to start with an open approach to using organizational data. It’s the foundation for AI adoption to get the results you want,” she said, adding that successful leaders take an inclusive approach to AI by merging different roles and breaking down isolated data warehouses.
At Microsoft AI Business School, this is illustrated by the example of a Microsoft marketing department that decided to use AI to better assess the potential opportunities that the sales team should be guided by. To come up with this solution, the marketing team worked with data scientists to create machine learning models that analyze thousands of variables to score leads. The key to success was combining the marketers' knowledge of lead quality with the knowledge of machine learning experts.
“In order to change the culture and implement AI, you need to involve the people closest to the business problem you are trying to solve,” Azizirad said, adding that sales people use the lead scoring model because they believe it gives high results.
AI and responsibility
Building trust is also linked to the responsible development and deployment of AI systems. As Microsoft market research has shown, this resonates with business leaders. The more leaders of high-growth companies know about AI, the more they realize they need to ensure that AI is deployed responsibly.
The Microsoft AI Business School module on the impact of responsible AI demonstrates Microsoft's own work in this area. The course materials include real-life examples where Microsoft leaders learned lessons such as the need to protect intelligent systems from attack and identify biases in the datasets used to train models.
“Over time, as companies depend on the algorithms and machine learning models they create, there will be a lot more focus on governance,” said McQuire, an analyst at CCS Insight.
Source: habr.com