Joseph Ours, Centric Consulting’s AI Strategy and Modern Software Delivery practice lead, was quoted extensively in Harvard Business Review’s briefing paper, “Evaluating Frameworks to Define an AI Corporate Strategy,” about how to remain competitive during the “AI gold rush.”
Harvard Business Review (HBR) has released a new briefing paper, “Evaluating Frameworks to Define an AI Corporate Strategy,” to serve as a practical guide for organizations as they start their artificial intelligence (AI) journey. The papers — which are released periodically to summarize an issue and provide key information to decision makers — was sponsored by Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source solutions, including Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes.
The paper dives into the rise of AI in business, understanding a platform approach to AI, understanding the foundation model approach, and how to define use cases for AI, including practical steps to take along the way.
There’s no argument that AI is taking the world by storm, with 94 percent of global business leaders agreeing that it’s critical to success over the next three years, the paper notes.
“We’re already undergoing the AI revolution. It’s going to be impactful, and it’s going to be transformative on a societal level,” Ours said. “Your survival may be at risk if you decide not to adopt AI, and so you have to start figuring out your strategy now – where you’re going to employ it and how you’re going to employ it.”
Choosing a framework, whether it’s a platform or a foundation approach, is the first step for organizational leaders starting their AI journey. Ours opined on the foundation model approach, which is a custom-built AI that uses a large-scale AI system to gain a general understanding of patterns, structures and representations across domains, which can then be fine-tuned for specific tasks.
“In the long run, it will be more advantageous to develop your own models because they’re customized for your unique needs. And so, it’s a decision of buy versus build – are you going to build a model, or are you going to buy a model?” Ours questions, noting that the platform approach is less costly but doesn’t always meet industry needs.
No matter the approach, every organization needs to think about its corporate AI strategy now. This means organizations need to ensure decision-makers are AI literate, understand their data and how it’s used, look at various opportunities AI presents, and think long-range as they consider options.
“AI is not going away, and every day you don’t invest in it, you need to realize that your competitors are. Not everyone has the same amount of capital to invest in it, so you may have to be smart and scrappy. Companies really need to be intentional about how they’re thinking about and using these technologies,” Ours concluded.