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Are we in an Innovation Winter and is ChatGPT to Blame?

August 03, 2023  /  Steffen Bartschat

“It must be tough to justify doing innovation these days when all the top corporate leaders are worried about doing more in Artificial Intelligence,” a fellow networking meeting attendee observed after we exchanged the “what do you do” pleasantries.

It does seem like we are in an Innovation “Winter”. At my last gathering of the Innovation Executive Forum, around a third of attendees commented that they were changing or looking for new roles (myself included).

For the past twelve months I had assumed that the cutback in innovation investments was due to the recession. Many innovation efforts are "idea factories" that fall short on impact and thus end up in the nice-to-have category, subject to belt tightening. Unless of course you have created a growth factory and your CEO is a chess player. During the last recession, the company I worked for actually increased their innovation budget, because they were anticipating the belt-tightening moves from their competitors and figured that they could get an advantage by having a host of new product offerings available as the world predictably switched back into growth mode a few years down the road.

But as I was sipping my networking beer I pondered the comment re: AI. Is it possible that some CEOs are shifting their R&D dollars from Innovation to AI?

I would say that strategy is even more short-sighted than cutting back on innovation projects during a recession. After all, it is the innovation team’s primary mission to anticipate and thus prevent business-busting technology disruptions. Over the past two decades these disruptions were fueled first by software and then hardware as it became easier for 3-4 person startups to access a global supply chain, creating a wave of “digital transformation” that is still sweeping through all aspects of corporate operations. AI has been around for many decades, of course, but recently the field of “generative” AI has exploded into our consciousness, and progress right now outpaces even Moore’s Law, which drove the explosion of digital devices in the first two decades of the 21st century.

Keeping up with these technical trends is the exact job the innovation team was created for:

  • Study emerging technology categories and influence corporate strategy to incorporate the new trends (Listening Post).

  • Evaluate specific technologies and match them with the needs and the capabilities of the corporation (Tech Scouting).

  • Build prototypes and MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) by sourcing new tech from startups or engaging in partnerships; learn by doing (Greenhouse).

  • Experiment with the new ways this technology can create and capture value for both the corporate and its customers (Business Model Innovation).

So when it comes to AI and the sudden appearance of generative AI there is no need to panic. Just send in the innovation team – they have been handling such disruptive tech for the past decade! And if you act fast, you might get ahead of the competition that is still cutting costs. The San Francisco Bay Area leads the race in AI innovation, boasting over 3000 companies headquartered here with over 40% of these founded in just the past five years. It's beginning to feel like Spring already...

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