Data & AI: Avoiding child's soccer
With SFF and SWITCH, I gave a series of open and closed-door sessions on bringing data/AI mainstream. Here are some key points I shared:
- Diversity is key to innovation. Hiring for diversity gives us a broader consideration set, new perspectives, and a way to look around corners. But how do you do this when these talents barely exist in the market?
- Hire them when you come across these "unicorns", and do it quickly. Blink and s/he'll be gone!
- Build understanding and empathy of under-represented populations in your existing staff. Your employees want to learn and grow as individuals, and promote equality.
- Create the talent. Find smart, motivated individuals, and help them build the data and AI skillset, or bundle them with data and AI technical staff to co-create.
- Avoid new silos while breaking down walls. Leveraging ready-solution ISVs are a great way to solve business problems quickly. But be aware, these nimble solutions sometimes decide that "customer stickiness" equates to holding your data hostage in proprietary format. "Want a new feature? Sure, but you must get that from us and it'll take us 18 months to develop it." While you're quickly solving for a problem, you may be creating a new data silo that needs to be undone later for true digital transformation. Do your homework and don't forget to include IT to vet solutions.
- Pilot in a production-ready manner. DevOps, governance, privacy, responsible AI: these are not fancy terms to consider when you go into production. You need to build these into the DNA of how you operate through equipping your most passionate early adopters. This will set you on the right path from the beginning. I work with too many organizations that need change management efforts after bad practices have settled in. Ignoring these areas will doom your data projects to failure.
And now that the event is over, here's an article written up on a panel I quite enjoyed contributing to: Covid-19 will pave the way for more innovation: Deep tech experts, Singapore News & Top Stories - The Straits Times
