Business Leaders—Here's Your Strategic AI Roadmap For 2024

CEO at Planview , a global leader in Portfolio and Value Stream Management. Years ago, Roy Amara, a cofounder of the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, highlighted what's now called Amara's Law : "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run." Today, AI is proving this law true on both ends.

Everyday technology is evolving, especially with generative AI challenging our expectations. In the past year, we've seen significant progress, from basic chatbots to GPT 4 passing the bar exam. The blend of increased intelligence, automation and accelerated productivity is boosting work efficiency to new heights, marking a new era of innovation.

To seize this opportunity, leaders need a proactive, forward thinking approach. With AI advancing rapidly, organizations can no longer afford a passive stance. Prioritizing AI readiness and scalability aligns innovation with business outcomes, providing a competitive edge in the market. For business leaders, here's a practical roadmap for effective AI adoption in 2024.

Leading AI adopters will leverage data curation. Winning organizations will curate their data into shared bodies of knowledge that enable AI models like GPT backed Copilots to drive digitalization at scale. A recent Gartner report found that nearly 70% of CFOs believe digital spending is underperforming against expected outcomes.

The root cause is a disconnect between those outcomes and an organization’s capacity to deliver them. Planview’s Project to Product 2023 State of the Industry Report found that business leaders believe IT teams in charge of digital transformation efforts can deliver 10 times more than their actual capacity.

Only 8% of IT and software development plans are ultimately executed. The major roadblock stems from disparate data. Most organizations leverage myriad different systems and tools to deliver transformation at scale. Fit for purpose systems to deliver work are OK in this regard, as standardization isn’t practical.

However, none of the different systems are integrated or aligned, and value streams with minimal interoperability cause bottlenecks that hinder transformation efforts from succeeding. Curating datasets into a common ontology and in a centralized data platform creates a holistic picture of how the business and initiatives are performing.

Once that is in place, organizations can then engineer prompts to train generative AI to produce impactful prescriptive insights, identify high risk initiatives and refine resource allocations. This helps remove drudgery from strategic planning to execution processes with AI powered productivity. Organizations that unlock this accelerated time to value in 2024 will develop agility to adapt to evolving environments in a much more rapid way.

Copilots will democratize complex enterprise software and uplevel productivity. Copilots will become fixtures of digital centric work environments. "Copilot" is quickly becoming less of a proprietary name and more of a staple term for augmenting human performance . There are a few ways to incorporate Copilots in your organization.

Coding Copilots will continue to gain broad adoption in 2024, enabling better code productivity and quality. We will also see increased adoption of application Copilots that democratize technical processes—helping casual, infrequent or novice users maximize the value. Top performing Copilots deliver actionable recommendations derived from meticulously curated data.

Success in digital initiatives hinges on cross business alignment, establishing outcome baselines and setting targets while diligently tracking actuals. Last month, Microsoft announced the availability of its new Copilot, which integrates with M365 applications. My organization launched our Copilot in September, which enables users to maximize the value of our platform through data driven insights.

GitHub also has a Copilot, as does Salesforce and several other leading technology companies. Review the different Copilot applications and see how each can add value to your business. As stated in this August 2023 Gartner report , enterprise leaders should apply this emerging technology to planning efforts to ensure the formulation of a well informed digital business strategy.

AI adoption will drive demand for high level strategy reskilling. It’s no secret that the ongoing AI hype is sparking valid concerns about its potential to replace human workers across industries. However, in the context of digital transformation, we shouldn’t think about the future with a narrow "human or machine" mindset.

It’s really about humans plus machines. Applying AI to augment manual workflows is what will deliver the greatest impact. Forrester estimates that enterprise AI initiatives will free up to 50% more time in 2024 for IT employees to engage in creative problem solving, drive customer centric innovation and generate business value (pg.

4). As AI adoption accelerates, reskilling will be critical to preparing employees for a not so distant future when high level strategic ideation is increasingly fundamental to their roles. A recent IBM study found that 40% of workers will need to reskill over the next three years due to AI, while early tech adopters who successfully reskill to adapt to AI driven job changes will report a revenue growth rate premium of 15% on average (pg.

7). It’s important to take steps to identify which internal positions and/or departments will have the greatest need for reskilling, and then start scaling investments accordingly. Seize the AI advantage . he trajectory from Amara's insightful observation to the current breakthroughs in AI paints a compelling picture of accelerated progress.

As we leap from basic chatbots to GPT 4's extraordinary capabilities, the landscape of possibilities is endless. The curation of data, the integration of Copilots and the strategic reskilling of talent emerge as pivotal strategies for organizations to not only adapt but thrive in this transformative era.

The play is clear: Embracing and harnessing the potential of AI positions business leaders to lead in innovation and secure a competitive advantage in the dynamic market landscape ahead. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation only community for world class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?.