The person that asked me the question had recently listened to a podcast about using ChatGPT to generate new business ideas – which is what he thought I do.

I said at the beginning of this that I’ve held many job titles in the past. If I was to go back into a corporate role today, the closest job title that aligns with what I do would be that of “Chief Innovation Officer”. 

A Chief Innovation Officer <should> be responsible for enabling and accelerating innovation across the entire organisation.

The department of the Chief Innovation Officer should not be (as sadly is often the case today) the the only department that “does innovative things” and the things that they should be doing should not only be related to “new product development” – which is another common misconception. 

If you want to know more about what the role of an innovation department should be (but often isn’t) then feel free to buy me a beverage and I’ll happily share my thoughts.

You might have missed my very specific choice of words at the start when I said I fell in love with “the process of innovation“.

The process of innovation consists of a wide range of activities including (and this is by no means an exhaustive list):

• understanding the current landscape, including the current and future challenges faced by the organisation and industry
• horizon scanning and trendwatching
• considering the impacts and implications of the above
• sharing all of the above across the ecosystem and soliciting feedback
• ideation and opportunity evaluation
• community development, knowledge sharing and co-creation
• idea management and innovation governance
• innovation enablement including hypothesis testing / skunkworks / labs
• sharing lessons learned, developing best practises and frameworks

Ideation is just one of the activities in the entire process of innovation and yes, AI can be extremely useful in this part of the process. It can be a great way to generate ideas and take you down new and interesting paths – but it should never be the only source of ideas.

I frequently use AI in what I do and I’m constantly looking out for opportunities to automate the repetitive and sometimes tedious parts of the process. I also explore how I can use AI as an ally, to help me do my job better – giving me superpowers!

But, by far the biggest part of what I do and what an innovation department should be doing involves people.

Ideas are nothing without execution.

If you’ve ever tried to change anything, you will know that the biggest barriers and obstacles that get in the way of getting things done are processes, biases, beliefs, behaviours, internal politics, attitudes, emotions …… the very essence of what makes us human.

Inspiring, cajoling, understanding and overcoming fears and biases, motivating, guiding, mentoring, helping unlock their capabilities and clearing out the obstacles in their path. All of which requires human interaction and human context.

Could an AI do any of that today?

Possibly some of it.

I’ve heard about AI coaches and motivational apps that are allegedly more empathetic than humans. But these require willingness to engage from the human ………

I can’t envisage the “stuck in their ways” middle manager, desperately trying to keep everything the same as it was, firing up a motivational app anytime soon in order to see the proposed new innovation that will completely revolutionise their work in a different light.

I spent a day at the CogX festival in London talking to AI startup founders and listening to keynotes and panel discussions from thought leaders in the field. 

An AI could probably ingest the videos and transcripts from the day but without being “the human in the room” they would miss the context – the crowd reactions, the enthusiasm, the dreams, the visions, the unwritten and unspoken elements of the day that are uniquely human.

Taking the very short list of innovation activities I’ve outlined above into account and considering the question “will AI take my job” my response is “not just yet”.