044 - The Roles of Product and Design when “Competing in the Age of AI” with HBS Professor and Author Karim Lakhani

If there’s one thing that strikes fear into the heart of every business executive, it’s having your company become the next Blockbuster or Neiman Marcus — that is, ignoring change, and getting wiped out by digital competitors. In this episode, I dived into the changing business landscape with Karim Lakhani who is a Professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of the new book Competing in the Age of AI: When Algorithms and Networks Run the World, which he wrote with his friend and colleague at HBS, Marco Iansiti.

 

We discuss how AI, machine learning, and digital operating models are changing business architecture, and disrupting traditional business models. I also pressed Karim to go a bit deeper on how, and whether he thinks product mindset and design factor in to the success of AI in today’s businesses. We also go off on a fun tangent about the music industry, which just might have to be a future episode!. In any case, I highly recommend the book. It’s particularly practical for those of you working in organizations that are not digital natives and want to hear how the featured companies in the book are setting themselves apart by leveraging data and AI in customer-facing products and in internal applications/operations. Our conversation covers:

• Karim’s new book, Competing in the Age of AI: When Algorithms and Networks Run the World, co-authored with Marco Iansiti.
• How digital operating models are colliding with traditional product-oriented businesses, and the impact this is having on today’s organizations.
• The critical role of data product management that is frequently missing when companies try to leverage AI
• Karim’s thoughts on ethics in AI and machine learning systems, and how they need to be baked into business and engineering.
• The similarity Karim sees between COVID-19 and AI
• The role of design, particularly in human-in-the-loop systems and how companies need to consider the human experience in applications of AI that augment decision making vs. automate it.
• How Karim sees the ability to adapt in business as being critical to survival in the age of AI

Resources and Links

•  Book Link: https://www.amazon.com/Competing-Age-AI-Leadership-Algorithms/dp/1633697622/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/klakhani
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professorkl/
• Harvard Business Analytics Program: https://analytics.hbs.edu/

Quotes from Today’s Episode

“Our thesis in the book is that a new type of an organization is emerging, which has eliminated bottlenecks in old processes.” - Karim

 

“Digital operating models have exponential scaling properties, in terms of the value they generate, versus traditional companies that have value curves that basically flatten out, and have fixed capacity. Over time, these digital operating models collide with these traditional product models, win over customers, and gather huge amounts of market share….” - Karim

 

“This whole question about human-in-the-loop is important, and it's not going to go away, but we need to start thinking about, well, how good are the humans, anyway? - Karim

 

“Somebody once said, “Ethics defines the boundaries of what you care about.” And I think that's a really important question…” - Brian

 

“Non-digital natives worry about these tech companies coming around and eating them up, and I can’t help but wonder ‘why aren't you also copying the way they design and build software?’” - Brian

 

“...These established companies have a tough time with the change process.” - Karim