Scaling Generative AI: From Hype to Value
Key Points
- The “faster horses” anecdote (whether truly Ford’s or not) underscores that true breakthroughs come from visionary, not incremental, thinking—exactly the mindset needed to harness generative AI.
- While AI pilots are proliferating and budgets are rising, roughly 40 % of firms remain stuck in experimentation, highlighting the urgent need to move from hype to scalable, responsible AI delivery.
- Scaling generative AI should first unlock productivity by breaking silos, augmenting every role and workflow, and delivering personalized, friction‑less customer experiences that truly delight.
- Beyond efficiency, AI‑powered digital products and services can open new revenue streams, reshape entire industries, and drive a massive wave of innovation and ROI.
- Successful transformation requires a clear GenAI strategy, prioritized use cases, and democratized tools that let anyone code faster, smarter, and more collaboratively across the organization.
Full Transcript
# Scaling Generative AI: From Hype to Value **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtYKoDomUp8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtYKoDomUp8) **Duration:** 00:09:41 ## Summary - The “faster horses” anecdote (whether truly Ford’s or not) underscores that true breakthroughs come from visionary, not incremental, thinking—exactly the mindset needed to harness generative AI. - While AI pilots are proliferating and budgets are rising, roughly 40 % of firms remain stuck in experimentation, highlighting the urgent need to move from hype to scalable, responsible AI delivery. - Scaling generative AI should first unlock productivity by breaking silos, augmenting every role and workflow, and delivering personalized, friction‑less customer experiences that truly delight. - Beyond efficiency, AI‑powered digital products and services can open new revenue streams, reshape entire industries, and drive a massive wave of innovation and ROI. - Successful transformation requires a clear GenAI strategy, prioritized use cases, and democratized tools that let anyone code faster, smarter, and more collaboratively across the organization. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtYKoDomUp8&t=0s) **From Hype to Scalable AI** - Matt Candy explains how businesses can shift from merely experimenting with generative AI to adopting an AI‑first, visionary approach that drives large‑scale productivity gains and responsible innovation. ## Full Transcript
there's a quote that I love that's most
often attributed to Henry Ford if I'd
asked people what they wanted they would
have said Faster Horses now there's a
debate around whether Ford really said
it but the underlying Insight is true
most people can Envision incremental
progress but it takes Visionary thinking
to imagine an entirely new way to solve
a problem and that's the crossroads that
we're at with generative AI every
business will jump to enhance their
existing processes to make productivity
gains but the companies that adopt an AI
first mindset can innovate in ways that
can change the world welcome to AI
Academy my name is Matt candy and I'm
the global managing partner for the
generative AI Consulting business at IBM
over the last year gen Pilots have
popped up everywhere seite interest is
at an all-time high and budgets are
pouring into AI technology but at least
40% of companies remain stuck in the
experimentation and EXP exporation
phases in this video I'll share how to
move Beyond AI hype to scaling your AI
ambition creating value for your
organization in a responsible way so
what do we mean when we talk about
scaling AI the notion of change at scale
can be overwhelming for many companies
like changing the tire on your car while
still driving how do you keep your
business moving forward whilst changing
how you do business when thinking about
scaling AI in your organization I
believe there's a few key opportunity
areas the first area productivity
impacts your employees your processes
and the value you deliver think of gen
at scale as a means to break down
process silos to unleash human
creativity and to amplify the potential
of every person on every team by
augmenting every role and workflow with
tools to make them smarter gen can
impact every touch point and interaction
your customers have with your brand
helping to engage engage them in more
personalized frictionless ways it must
Delight it must matter and it must both
preempt and deliver on their needs now
this one I'm very excited about the
potential of gen powered digital
products and services driving new
revenue streams and business models this
genid driven digital product and service
boom will be key to achieving value and
Roi and the scale of innovation will be
massive we're going to see entire
Industries transformed and reinvented
and scaling gen will optimize the IT
solutions that run the workflows and
processes and experiences in the back
end both in how they're built and how
they operate and one of the greatest
impacts of scaling gen will be
democratizing it putting it in
everybody's hands to build and deliver
new Solutions in a more efficient way
put more simply using gen to help us all
code better faster and smarter so now
that we know the value areas and we
understand what the potential is now
let's focus on how you drive this change
within your
organization the first key to driving
change is defining both your Genai
strategy and priority use cases these
are two sides of the same coin and
you've got to bring top down and bottom
up together so first from a strategic
top down perspective think about what
really moves the needle for your
business so let's say you're a hotel
launching a new brand creating new
designs flipping over properties
executing a new marketing campaign now
if you can create and launch a new brand
in 5 months versus 21 months this can
drastically increase your market share
strategically that's a big deal then
think about a bottomup role-based
approach to transformation consider all
the team members in your organization
and the roles that they play and so for
the hotel example this includes your
content creators your designers and
media teams and then ask what how do we
create AI assistant that help launch the
brand in a more efficient way because
the people closest to the work have the
best ideas about what will work and have
the best ability to create and Infuse AI
into those areas consider the humble
spreadsheet when EXL came to Market it
was a new tool that employees had to
learn to adopt so just imagine a central
team tasked with figuring out every use
for a spreadsheet for every type of role
in the company sounds a bit mad doesn't
it instead employees experimented they
adapted and they mastered different XL
functions and soon it became as
essential to productivity as coffee or
calculators as you think through Roi
you've got to look at the costs of
running the AI versus what the savings
and uplift by using it could be and in
the long term look for savings that
outweigh the investment long-term value
is about going from a single workflow or
use case to cascading the use of AI
across the organization and driving RL I
across multiple functions and
departments the next step of
transformation is building up your AI
Control Center with scaling AI there
will be lots of Technologies and models
that will run in different places some
will run in a cloud some on Prem some in
Edge devices and you can't scale if
there aren't consistent approaches in
place across all models environments and
Technologies your AI Control Center is a
layer that connects and wraps around
multiple models providing AI governance
and safe secure access to your
proprietary data this allows you to
deliver role-based access to different
gen models assistance and common
capabilities in an open trusted Manner
and having a centralized control center
is important not just for governance and
security but also for driving the ROI we
talked about earlier the right size
model running in the right place aligned
to the use case and task is going to
affect the financial cost and the carbon
cost and and the choices you make around
this will be really important another
element is your data layer right the big
models are trained on a small proportion
of the world's data the other
significant percentage is locked up
inside the firewalls of companies like
yours and the advantage for Enterprises
is going to come from how you bring that
proprietary data within your firewall
together with the right model to unlock
new sources of value the third step is
to reimagine your transformation
operating model a delivery approach that
moves quickly from idea to concept to
prototype to MVP to rollout to scaled
solution always linking back to the
benefit a multidisciplinary team and
co-creation is at the heart of this and
IBM we've helped clients set up gen Labs
centered around squad-based teams with
strategists designers developers data
scientists working together to do the
building making and creating anchoring
this transformation approach Around The
Human Experience is crucially important
it will mean people want to use these
new tools versus having to be pushed and
it will take practice employees must
unlearn old ways of working experiential
learning through using models and
testing out prompts a key to grasping
gen Concepts taking us from is this
going to steal my job to how can this
give me superpowers at my job because
your greatest competitive Advantage is
your people which brings me to the the
final key for successfully scaling gen
the transformative power of gen goes
beyond enabling your teams to perform
tasks more efficiently it also drives
individual growth and creates new jobs
and career paths that Empower employees
to perform higher value work Infuse this
new approach into the culture of your
company to return to the idea of Faster
Horses right this is an opportunity to
rethink how work gets done to reimagine
what work itself looks like to encourage
debate feedback and experimenting bring
together diverse experience skills and
insights and asking leaders at all
levels to repurpose their existing skill
sets to create a gen forward
environments that all can thrive in the
reality is we're moving past the peak of
the AI hype cycle the vision technology
and the data are all converging right
now I'm a Believer and I told you at the
beginning that companies that are adopt
an AI first mindset are the ones that
will innovate in ways that change the
world and in ways that will also change
our
lives at age nine my middle daughter was
diagnosed with type 1 diabetes early on
it was a nightmare of Jabs and testing
and monitoring and timing just to keep
her blood sugar bouncing within
reasonable parameters I was desperate
for a way to make those processes better
for her desperate for Faster Horses but
instead somebody had the vision to build
her a car and so today she has AI
powered monitoring and an insulin pump
that keeps her blood sugar safe and
steady I can track it on my phone or
Smartwatch in real time and if her
sugars go too high the AI starts to make
decisions seamlessly and painlessly and
the difference that this technology has
made in her life and my life is profound
she will live longer and happier because
somebody had the vision to rethink old
processes and to solve the problem in a
whole new way and that's the opportunity
ahead for all of us now with Gen to
radically rethink what is possible and
then to go out there and make it happen