AI intrapreneurship is just one hurdle

AI is here. One futurist poses the question facing us as “How do we provide opportunities for meaningful activity for every individual of this planet which in turn provides them with the means and resources to unfold themselves to their highest potential — while working in service to life and value creation?”

His answer is AI intrapreneurship. But, that is only part of the equation.

Without much fanfare, some of the biggest names in tech have been pulling back on once-enthusiastic efforts to disrupt healthcare.

Within the past nine months, Alphabet Inc. has dismantled its healthcare division Google Health while IBM sold its Watson Health data and analytics business to a private equity firm, having struggled to turn a profit. It turns out healthcare is a highly complex industry and much of the hype around the transformative promise of artificial intelligence may have been overblown.

In his book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Steve Blank described what has become the gospel of lean startup methodologies: Customer validation, customer discovery, customer creation and company building

The path to sickcare digital transformation is a bit shorter, but certainly no less difficult and plagued by failure: Personal innovation readiness, organizational innovation readiness and digital/AI transformation.

Deploying an AI solution in an organization requires overcoming more hurdles, each of which challenges even the most accomplished leaders and their followers.

They are:

Personal innovation and entrepreneurship readiness

Organizational innovation readiness

Executing while innovating takes a core leadership attribute called ambidexterity: the art of balancing operational optimization with innovative experimentation, simultaneously enhancing efficiency while cultivating continuous innovation. Of the five attributes Deloitte's research has identified as integral to being an “undisruptable” CEO—emotional fortitude, a beginner’s mindset, a mastery of disruptive jiu-jitsu, deep knowledge of the customer, and ambidexterity—ambidexterity is perhaps the most critical, yet the most elusive. An ambidextrous mindset calls for leaders of large, legacy companies to embrace the kind of agile, intuitive behavior that has made freshly minted startups the darlings of digital consumers and investors, while also maintaining the operational excellence and discipline that many such incumbents are known for. This paradoxical ability can allow leaders to radically change the business model to remain relevant in the face of disruption in ways that their organizations can understand, accept, and integrate.

Leading change

If you’ve got a major change on the horizon (or if you're currently leading one that's stuck in a ditch), you need to be aware of three common pitfalls — and how to avoid them.

1. Don't underestimate the scope of the work. 
2. Don’t overestimate your employees' capacity to execute your vision while continuing to carry out their existing day-to-day responsibilities.
3. Don’t hide why this transformation is important to you. 

AI Strategic thinking and planning

Every CxO, whether in sickcare or not, is confronted with the dilemma of how to balance the now with the new. Whether it is EMR deployment, AI solutions, improving cash flow or plugging holes in the HIT system, the problem is the same: finding the right balance between operational improvement and innovation.

Overcome the barriers to AI dissemination and implementation, particularly the people part of AI.

AI Law

AI ethics rules, regs and rights

Data literacy and computer science technical training models

Process and performance improvement

Intrapreneurship

But, when it comes to using artificial intelligence in sickcare, the process is even more complicated and involves not just ideation (problem seeking) and invention (problem solving) but integration in legacy IT systems and workflows and implementation by end users and staff.

Doing so means you will have to find the answers to these basic questions:

Intrapreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity by employees of an organization under VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex/complicated and ambiguous) conditions with the goal of creating stakeholder defined value through the deployment of innovation using a VAST business model. The steps include problem seeking, creating a value proposition and business model, testing your new business or project ideas and continually revisiting and revising them. Since the personal intrapreneurship risks and rewards are lower than entrepreneurship risks and rewards, it takes even more intrinsic personal motivation. You have to make it personal but not take it personally and be a go giver not a go getter.

Here are some landmines.

Here is a story about a no-code, low-code AI entrepreneur.

The startup ecosystem is shifting due to the rise of artificial intelligence. AI favors larger companies, necessitating a change in mindset for startups from disruption to transformation. While startups will face challenges in accessing sufficient data and computing power, they still have opportunities to innovate by providing AI-driven services directly to consumers.

Getting an AI solution to stakeholders requires a complex set of knowledge, skills, abilities and competencies. Teaching those to students and sickcare workers is just beginning and it will take years to develop them. In the meantime, we should learn from the periodic successes and the inevitable failures as we try to win the 4th industrial revolution.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack