AI Opportunity Seeking in Business

Topic

Middle managers hold a special place in strategic transformation processes: they are close to operations and simultaneously benefit from political closeness to decision makers. But are they aware of the power they hold when it comes to seeking AI opportunities for their businesses? How do they make sense of their organizations’ behavior towards AI opportunity seeking and what role do they assign themselves in seeking AI related opportunities in their areas of expertise?

Relevance

It is crucial for middle managers and top managers to be aware of current narratives that are affecting the pace of AI opportunity seeking. The era of AI is potentially much more disruptive and transformative for individuals and organizations than previous digitalization projects. Those differences need to be proactively addressed in order not to fall in the pitfalls of applying previously learnt patterns to AI opportunities. Fails, falls and the loss of proactive talents are pitfalls that can be avoided if you take appropriate action soon.

Results

The research has highlighted that middle managers’ hold a specifically important role in AI opportunity seeking. Timewise, their perception of AI opportunity seeking is primed be previous digital transformation experiences. Waiting for frameworks and hierarchical instructions, assigning IT a special role as transformation leader, mistrust towards leaderships’ abilities to deal with disruption – are relevant factors that directly affect how middle managers make sense of their organizations behavior towards AI opportunity seeking and what kind of power of agency they assign themselves in organizational AI opportunity seeking.

Implications for practitioners

-        Institutionalize fast ways to test AI use cases on a small scope

-        Train managers and top managers on AI literacy specifically related to prompt engineering and the recognition and assessment of use cases

-        Enforce a company culture and visible incentives to enhance optimizing and opportunity seeking change at the same time

-        Give strategic responsibility to digital natives

-        Strategically prioritize AI opportunity seeking as an overarching topic and raise awareness

Methods

The research is based on a qualitative research approach. Eleven semi-structured interviews were held with a variety of middle managers that have leading roles in contemporary companies among different industries and departments to allow for a variety of perspectives. Findings were systemically and iteratively coded in first and second order themes that led to four aggregated dimensions.