Artificial intelligence offers tremendous potential to accelerate innovation and growth for businesses of all sizes. However, with the rapid pace of change and sheer number of AI tools available, it can be overwhelming to determine where to start.
Innovation and AI strategist, Brad Costanzo created a simple yet powerful framework to cut through the complexity and enable entrepreneurs to tap into AI’s full potential.
AI Only Helps Your Business Innovate in 5 Areas (or Buckets)
According to Brad, while the capabilities of AI may seem endless, there are only 5 key business functions where AI can drive meaningful innovation: thinking, creating, communicating, analyzing, and automating.
He explains, “What really matters in your business in the age of AI are the exact same things that mattered before AI – you need attention, you need to generate leads, you need to turn those leads into sales, you need happy customers, smooth operations, and satisfied employees.”
AI won’t change your business priorities. But it can supercharge your ability to excel in these core functions. Brad emphasizes, “Yes, AI can accelerate what’s working now and unleash productivity you’ve only dreamed of, but only if you get really focused and start using it as a tool and not a toy.”
Let’s explore how AI can be applied within each of these 5 buckets:
1. Thinking
This bucket represents internal strategic work – ideation, research, planning. This is typically all of the outputs the the public never sees, it’s behind the scenes. AI can rapidly analyze data, patterns and connections to generate strategies, personas, SWOT analyses, and more. Brad shares, “I’ve created marketing plans in hours that would have taken months without AI.” Thinking tools like ChatGPT can serve as virtual advisors, ensuring plans align with company goals.
2. Creating
AI can create text, images, video, audio, as well as combinations and derivatives of each. From content to sales copy, AI can help create SEO articles, speech outlines, podcast editing, video creation, and entire books. Further, it can be produced with unprecedented speed and scale. But to ensure the quality is on par with human outputs, Brad cautions, “AI should always be thought of as a creative co-pilot and not just a push button solution.”
3. Communicating
Chatbots and voice bots can field customer queries, schedule appointments, provide support, and communicate with prospects, customers, employees, and stakeholders. AI-powered handbooks can deliver information on-demand. Communication touchpoints can be made more efficient without losing the human touch.
4. Analyzing
Both quantitative and qualitative insights can be extracted by AI. It can surface patterns and stories from data that humans would likely miss. Transcripts of sales calls can be analyzed to identify what top performers do differently. AI can even critique and improve copy.
5. Automating
Marketing and sales processes can be automated based on triggers and events. Workflows can connect and sequence tools like Zapier, Make, UIPath and more. When AI is layered on top, profound automation is possible. As an example, Brad shares how he automated quote sharing across social media by using AI to expand each quote into an entire article with graphics.
A Tactical 5-Step Approach to Applying the Framework
With these 5 buckets in mind, Brad offers a simple yet tactical process for implementation:
- Audit where you currently spend time, money and focus across each bucket.
- Brainstorm cool ways AI could help in each area.
- Prioritize the highest potential ideas using his ICE framework:
- Impact – the potential business value
- Confidence – belief in the solution’s effectiveness
- Ease – implementation complexity
- Implement starting with one or two top priorities.
- Repeat – continuously optimize by revisiting the framework.
Brad summarizes, “The beautiful part about AI is the speed of implementation is really rapid…money loves speed.”
The Future Belongs to the Focused
Rather than get distracted by AI’s endless possibilities, Brad advocates zeroing in on the handful of high-impact applications within your business. “The more focused you get, the more likely you’ll identify and implement the projects that will truly move the needle.”
AI offers tremendous potential across these 5 buckets to enhance how you think, create, communicate, analyze, and automate. But the companies that will win the future will be those who apply AI as a precision instrument to amplify their strengths, not those who approach it as a toy. Brad offers a clear framework, tactical steps, and most importantly – the permission to be selective. “Focus on the need, not the tool.”
Brad welcomes discussions on how this AI innovation framework could be applied within your business. “If you’d like a partner in doing this with your business, feel free to reach out and we can explore if working together might be an option.” The future of business will be shaped by those who harness AI’s potential in focused, value-driven ways. Brad provides a clear blueprint to become one of those business leaders.
To learn more about Brad Costanzo and his approach, visit his company AcceleratedIntelligence.ai or connect with him on his LinkedIn profile here.
