by Angela Guess

According to a recent press release, “McKinsey & Company estimates major technology companies spent between $20 billion and $30 billion on AI in 2016.  AI’s ubiquity is real as exemplified by Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant. Yet, we are probably in the buggy-whip era of digital assistants.  Each include artificial intelligence, but expect that AI capabilities in personal assistants will soon eclipse today’s capabilities. Plus, AI will likely automate customer service with human-like intelligence. Right now, artificial intelligence is used to make snap trading decisions in response to news reports.  It could write this press release. (It didn’t.)  Companies are rushing to integrate AI into products and services.  In the rush, it is likely many companies – especially entrepreneurial companies – will make costly mistakes.”

The release goes on, “Extrapolating from more than a decade of research of entrepreneurial companies, Sharon Tal and Marc Gruber, authors of Where to Play, have cited seven common mistakes that were made by even the most successful executives: (1) Falling in love with the first AI solution (make sure to create a choice set of business options before you settle on one). (2) Staying in your neighborhood — Search outside your current business and beyond your current customers for new applications and markets (search distantly, in other market domains, create a varied set of options). (3) Searching for the ‘perfect’ opportunity (there is no such thing, they all have pros and cons, need to accept this and be aware of the downsides). (4) Rationalizing intuition (perform a systematic, comprehensive assessment and apply a structured decision making framework. Involve other team members.) (5) Suffering from paralysis by analysis (at some point you need to choose, accept uncertainty, it’s part of the innovation game).”

Read more at PR Newswire.

Photo credit: Where to Play