Collaborating with AI increases business innovation by 56%, as new study reveals complex link between AI and growth
- Businesses who use AI to drive innovation see 38% larger impact on growth
- One fifth (21%) of C-suite leaders do not understand their own AI business strategy
- IDEO opens up new AI tool to increase creativity and innovation
AI collaboration increases the volume, diversity and detail of new ideas from business leaders according to a new experiment by global strategic consulting and design business IDEO. The research also shows that using AI to accelerate innovation rather than efficiency can increase growth by more than a third.
In the study 1,000 business leaders answered a brief to design new products and services that could achieve both growth and sustainability objectives (1). Business leaders who received AI generated questions to help with ideation in response to the brief produced 56% more ideas, with a 13% increase in the diversity of ideas and a 27% increase in the level of detail compared to a control group who were not provided with AI prompts (2).
The study also found that the way leaders interacted with AI significantly impacted results. Business leaders who received AI generated example ideas, saw a 28% decrease in the volume of ideas, 19% decrease in diversity and 11.3% decrease in detail compared with leaders with AI generated questions.
To support AI driven innovation, IDEO is opening access to their proprietary AI brainstorming tool – Big Questions. The tool is designed to help users collaborate with AI to develop useful prompts, thought-starters and questions to tackle their most pressing challenges.
Sergio Fregoni, Executive Director at IDEO said:
“AI’s greatest potential is in helping leaders to create and launch new-to-the-world ideas. When AI is used as the world’s most diverse and informed collaborator, rather than a magic black box of solutions, we can address more divergent and complex challenges with greater speed, and at a larger scale.”
AI’s complex relationship with growth
The research showed that UK businesses using AI saw a 2.4% increase in growth and 0.24% reduction in costs as a result, demonstrating that the greatest benefits of AI adoption come from driving growth, rather than cutting costs. However, these numbers hide significant variation.
C-suite leaders who use AI as a tool for innovation saw a 5.4% increase in their growth, a 38% higher figure than for companies who use AI for other objectives.
While businesses using AI consistently see benefits across customer experience, efficiency and product development, there are also growing pains. C-suite leaders who use AI as a cost cutting tool are three times as likely to see a reduction in their efficiency than average and twice as likely to say it has damaged their relationship with clients (3). Furthermore, more than a quarter (26%) say AI has actually slowed their growth.
Despite these trade-offs, just 18% of C-suite respondents intend to use AI to drive growth in their business, with 64% seeing it as a cost cutting tool.
Lorenz Korder, Managing Director of IDEO London, said:
“The time will come soon when AI is embedded within every business. Winning in this world will require leaders to give AI a seat in the boardroom, not just a role in the back office.
“Leaders need to know how to embrace AI to create new ideas and fresh businessmodels, not just ever more efficient versions of the businesses which came before.
“In a world which has thrown so many curveballs at business leaders, the disruptive potential of AI is a reason for optimism and growth. We must grasp it.”
C-suite remain skeptical of AI’s potential
Despite the potential of AI to drive growth, a worrying 21% of C-suite leaders do not understand how or why their businesses are using AI. This is in spite of the fact that 45% of C-suite respondents believe that AI will make or break their organisation.
The findings underline that many C-suite leaders are failing to deeply integrate an understanding of AI into their strategy. A surprising 35% of the C-suite have said that AI has changed the way they talk about their products and services but has not changed what they actually do, with 26% believing AI is a passing fad.
-ENDS-
Notes to Editors
For more information or interview requests please contact:
- Ino Rousselet at ideo@hillandknowlton.com, +44 20 7413 3188
Methodology
The survey was conducted between 25 June and 2 July via Focaldata with 1,022 UK business decision-makers, including 256 C-suite respondents. To analyse the business impacts of using AI, 338 IT industry respondents were removed from the analysis.For the experiment, the leaders were all given the task of designing new products and services that could drive growth in their company whilst helping younger people lead more sustainable lives. The respondents were split randomly into three groups:
- The first group, leaders were given a blank slate (no further prompts)
- The second group, leaders were given a list of 5 example ideas generated by AI
- The third group, leaders were given a list of questions/considerations generated by the AI to help leaders with ideation
The diversity of ideas was calculated based on the type of solution considered - 93 categories were used based on those from Project Drawdown. The length of ideas (average word count per idea) was used as a proxy for detail.
About IDEO
IDEO is a multinational business consultancy providing strategic consulting, product and service design, and capability building services. IDEO helps organisations to focus on a vision of the future and to make that vision real.
IDEO supports clients throughout Europe from its studio in London. The London studio is a multidisciplinary community of makers combining expertise in digital design, strategy design, organisational design, service and product design, among others. IDEO’s unique methodologies bring the future into focus by leveraging human insight, prototyping and experimentation to design solutions clients can see, feel and believe in.
IDEO was formed in 1991 with the merging of David Kelley Design (est 1978), Moggridge Associates (est 1969), ID Two (est 1979), and Matrix Product Design (est 1983).
Footnotes
- By diversity, we mean more unique ideas were produced by the sample.
- 2. 9% of “cost cutters” report a reduction in efficiency and 6% report damage to customer relationships. This compares to 3% on average for both data points.