What is your AI ambition?

Discover how far you want to take your company with the power of AI. Gartner presents a methodology for strategically defining your company in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

Strategies and Recommendations, According to Gartner.

Strategies: 

Companies may initially adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI) opportunistically, but it is crucial to understand that AI goes beyond a simple technology. Gartner recommends that business leaders establish a consensus on how AI should be implemented within the organization.

This collective direction, known as ‘AI Ambition’, determines whether the company seeks to surpass the usual productivity gains and aims for revolutionary and disruptive impact, assessing the willingness to bring AI into direct interaction with customers or use it to optimize internal operations.

Gartner’s AI Opportunity Radar provides a framework for establishing this ambition, helping clients explore and commit to AI opportunities in four key areas: (1) products/services, (2) core capabilities, (3) customer experience/front office and (4) back office.

Recommendations to Executive leaders:

• Establish the company’s ‘AI Ambition’ early, allowing the organization to continue experimenting. Ensure that pilot projects and smaller implementations reveal opportunities across the enterprise, not just in the front and back office.
• Monitor the reactions of customers, citizens, and partners when served by AI, such as a chatbot. The influence of AI on the company’s external perception is crucial.
• Provide top-down strategic guidance on how AI should support company goals and public/market perception. Small implementations are helpful but will eventually need to be aligned with strategic guidance, including growth goals, AI no-go zones, and acceptable risks. AI, being more than a technology, impacts competitiveness, brand perception and can require significant investments, making it a responsibility of senior business leaders.

Introduction:

In the current global scenario, where artificial intelligence (AI) is capable of everything from talking to customers to discovering proteins, it is imperative that executive leaders define how and where AI will be applied in their companies. This decision process is what we call ‘AI Ambition’. Mastering fluency in enterprise AI starts with clearly defining the scope and ambition in the AI journey.

Ask yourselves:

• Is the company using AI just to improve front and back-end operations, or also to create new products and services?
• How will AI affect the company’s competitive posture?
• Will AI be used as a competitive advantage, or as a defense against it?

It is critical that executive leaders and their teams answer these questions as quickly as possible, reviewing them frequently as the landscape of AI business opportunities evolves. Gartner has developed a framework that not only allows you to explore AI opportunities but also establishes the company’s ‘AI Ambition’.

Figure 1: The AI Opportunity Radar

Navigating the AI Opportunity Radar: An In-Depth Look

In the dynamic world of Artificial Intelligence (AI), companies face the challenge of identifying how this technology can be more effectively integrated into their operations and strategies. Gartner presents the ‘AI Opportunity Radar’, an essential tool to guide companies on this journey.

The Radar is composed of a central axis, focused on the employee), outlining four opportunity zones.

Axis X: Everyday AI vs. Transformative AI

Everyday AI focuses on productivity, helping businesses operate faster and more efficiently, such as automated marketing content generation and managing customer interactions through chatbots.

Transformative AI adds creativity, discovery and innovation to AI productivity improvements, such as healthcare diagnostics or autonomous vehicles.

Y-Axis: External Customer-Facing vs. Internal Operations

External customer-facing: Here, AI is used directly in interactions with customers or incorporated into the products and services sold.

Internal Operations: Represents companies that infuse their internal operations and core capabilities with AI.

Four Opportunity Zones

Front Office: Everyday customer-facing improvements, such as improving customer experience (CX) through AI assistants.

Product/Services: Companies infusing their products/services with AI, such as banks using robo-advisors for wealth management.

Core Capabilities: Improving core strategic capabilities of the company through AI, such as more accurate diagnoses in healthcare.

Back Office: Internal use of AI in everyday situations, such as automating administrative tasks.

Each zone offers unique opportunities and challenges, and companies must carefully evaluate where and how AI can be most effectively implemented to achieve their strategic objectives.

Defining your Company’s AI Ambition: A Strategic and Experimental Approach

Figure 2: How to Determine Your Enterprise’s AI Ambition

In the contemporary business world, artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a mere productivity instrument to become a fundamental engine of growth and transformation.

Determining your company’s AI ambition starts with your organization’s business strategy or public mandate. This starting point provides intentional strategic planning to identify where AI can best be applied.

However, it is essential to recognize the experimental nature inherent to AI, promoting a fusion between intentional strategic approaches and routine experimental discoveries.

Intentional Strategic Planning

For executive leaders, it is crucial to make decisions about how AI can create new competitive differentiators. Whether to lead, launch products or services powered by AI, or even evaluate the impact of the early introduction of these products on the company’s competitive positioning, AI represents a decisive strategic lever. In the public sector, leaders also have a responsibility to explore how AI can transform the delivery of their public mandate.

Routine Experimental Discovery

Initially, companies will experiment with AI to improve processes and solve problems, learning from these experiences and increasing interest and confidence in using AI in different areas. These AI initiatives, generally short-term, seek immediate returns and form a bottom-up perspective, populating various areas of the AI Opportunity Radar.

Visualizing AI Ambition

To lead effectively in this evolving environment, we recommend that business leaders declare an AI ambition as early as possible to guide investment and interest in AI that has been frenzied and scattered since late 2022. Combining these discovery approaches driven by AI with more intentional strategic planning will help the company solidify its AI ambition, defining the direction in which investments, technology and business models should take.

Explore Use Cases on the AI Opportunity Radar: A Strategic Vision for Cross-Industries

In the current business landscape, the AI Opportunity Radar emerges as a crucial tool for identifying and exploring potential applications of artificial intelligence. This highly versatile tool allows companies to map specific use cases into four opportunity zones, placing the company at the center of innovation and digital transformation.

The Dimensions of Viability on the AI Opportunity Radar

The AI Opportunity Radar is structured into three rings, representing different levels of viability, based on three essential dimensions:

• Technical Feasibility: The organization’s ability to obtain and implement technology.
• Internal Readiness: The organization’s ability and openness to utilize and incorporate the use case.
• External Readiness: The degree of acceptance of AI by customers, partners and other external parties.

These dimensions translate into rings of high, medium and low viability on the AI Opportunity Radar, offering a clear path for the strategic adoption of AI technologies.

Use Cases in Different Industries

In the Retail Sector

Use cases range from everyday AI, such as in employee hiring and onboarding or conversational chatbots, to transformative AI opportunities spanning social commerce and customer subscription services.

Figure 3: The AI Opportunity Radar Populated with Retail Industry Use Cases

In the Banking Sector

Use cases range from AI in customer service to deeper transformations in banking processes, including AI-based financial coaches and redesign of banking operations.

Figure 4: The AI Opportunity Radar Populated with Banking Industry Use Cases

In the Health Sector

AI presents itself as a driving force for innovations, from everyday applications to revolutionary changes in healthcare services, improving the efficiency and quality of patient care.

Figure 5: The AI Opportunity Radar Populated with Healthcare Industry Use Cases

Executive leadership teams can use these radars to focus on specific AI use cases for their industry. By analyzing models and more industry radars on the Gartner website, companies can explore a wide range of intra-industry use cases across finance, HR, legal, IT and supply chain, providing a comprehensive and detailed view of emerging opportunities in various industries.

Exploring these use cases in the AI Opportunity Radar not only allows for a more targeted approach and is strategic, but also facilitates the identification of viable and promising opportunities within the organization’s reach, guiding investments and innovation initiatives effectively.