Four ways to identify generative AI ideas with staying power

It’s not an understatement to say that generative AI is transforming business and society, and boardrooms across the globe are grappling with its impact and opportunity. Research predicts that gen AI will save 300 billion work hours each year and give a 20 percent boost to the global GDP by 2030.

There has also been an explosion of new use cases in almost every industry alongside the rise of AI-generated products, brands, and experiences. Some are substantive innovations, but many are, frankly, gimmicks. While this is to be expected given that the potential of this technology is still being explored, it can be overwhelming to figure out which ideas are most valuable.

So, how can you cut through the noise to find gen AI ideas with staying power?

The answer lies in the core unique capabilities of gen AI. These are the skills that machines have, but humans don’t. We call them the four gen AI differentiators. Not only are these the unique skills that differentiate gen AI from humans – they are also the unique capabilities you should look for to assess which ideas will create legitimate value for your business.

The four gen AI differentiators

One: Exponential variations

Gen AI can do more than simply produce ideas. Look for strategies that leverage its ability to help you pursue many ideas at once.

So far, people and brands alike have been living in a world with limited attention bandwidth. Just as it's difficult to hold more than one conscious thought at once, there are large costs involved for companies that decide to pursue many initiatives at once. For example, if you want to develop three variations of a product, you often need three teams.

This all changes with gen AI. Because it provides almost limitless thinking power, suddenly many more tasks can be parallelised and pursued together. It significantly increases the number and variety of ideas that can be generated during the divergent stages of the design process. The increase is not linear, but exponential, greatly amplifying the potential for creativity and ideation in the earliest phases of the creative journey.

How brands can leverage it: Over the past decades, industrial machinery evolved to enable a much higher degree of customisation, which empowered companies to produce a wider variety of products tailored to specific customer needs and preferences. With the newfound ability to explore many different options and variations simultaneously through gen AI, brands are seeing the next evolution of this capacity.

Now that brands don’t have to distill their options so early in the decision-making process, they can exponentially increase the number of product variations they bring to market and unlock new differentiation strategies. This opens up many possibilities for how experiences are created and delivered, including the potential of hyper-personalised experiences tailored to an audience of one.

Two: Expertise at scale

Look for gen AI solutions that replicate human expertise at scale.

Until now, problem solvers could only be in one place at a time. Gen AI makes that problem obsolete with its ability to create an always-on digital version of human experts. Now, the expertise of problem solvers can be uploaded and replicated infinite times. And just as problem solvers can be replicated, so can, in many cases, the target users of a given solution.

How brands can leverage it: You can likely imagine many scenarios where expertise at scale would be a game-changer, such as customer service, customer experience, employee onboarding, human resources, and others. But there is even more opportunity in this space – the concept of expertise at scale has the power to reshape entire industries and give rise to entirely new business models.

Consider the prospect of synthetic users or marketplaces populated by subject matter experts, where knowledge is commoditised and exchanged in a dynamic ecosystem. Such innovations have the potential to democratise access to expertise, empowering individuals and organisations to leverage specialised knowledge on-demand. And once the initial investment is made in developing and implementing these systems, the marginal cost of producing additional output becomes negligible. By harnessing the collective intelligence of gen AI-driven systems, brands can unlock new sources of value creation and drive sustainable growth.

Three: Speed and efficiency

Gen AI is faster and more efficient than humans, so look for ideas that fully leverage this capability.

It might sound like a no-brainer, but speed and efficiency are two core advantages of gen AI, which processes inputs and generates knowledge infinitely faster than humans. In the same way, gen AI can make human innovators faster and better at doing their jobs, enabling them to get more work done in the same amount of time.

How brands can leverage it: Increased speed and efficiency can infinitely improve internal processes, opening up a new pathway for brands to compete on cost leadership. It can also be leveraged to elevate the customer experience and accelerate time-to-market for new products and solutions. By deploying gen AI-driven customer service solutions, brands can deliver faster support, resolving issues in real time to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Additionally, gen AI-powered insights can inform product development cycles, enabling companies to iterate and innovate rapidly to meet evolving consumer demands. This accelerated pace of innovation not only enhances brand relevance but also enables faster time-to-market with new products and solutions.

Four: Reimagined interactions

One of the most transformative aspects of gen AI is its ability to talk to humans like a human.

The ability to interact in natural language radically changes human-computer interactions. Interfaces suddenly have no necessity for symbols or code but instead can be talked to like you talk to people, impacting what we even think of as an interface. We call these interactions the headless experience. They represent a departure from traditional user interfaces, offering a seamless and intuitive way to interact with gen AI-driven systems.

How brands can leverage it: In deploying these gen AI-first interactions, brands can position themselves as pioneers in delivering exceptional and memorable user experiences to achieve experience leadership. Harnessing the power of natural language interaction allows brands to forge deeper connections with their audience, offering unique and personalised experiences that resonate with consumers on a deeper level and ultimately foster stronger brand loyalty and affinity.

What's next?

Gen AI innovations have the power to transform your brand, but separating the substantive from the superficial is not always easy. Keeping the four gen AI differentiators in mind will allow you to better navigate the complexity and identify ideas with merit.

By leveraging the best ideas to create powerful solutions, your business can achieve transformative outcomes such as cost leadership, reduced time to market, customer loyalty, experience leadership, and more – and unlock an entirely new era of progress.