Special report: MIT Sloan insights for success in AI-driven organizations

Experts share innovative ideas for using artificial intelligence to solve critical business problems and deliver on strategy

Cambridge, MA, Oct. 10, 2024 — MIT Sloan School of Management has released a special report titled Leading With AI: Insights For Success In AI-Driven Organizations that offers leaders a strategic approach to using AI to solve critical business problems.

In it, faculty members and researchers have explored data integration, workforce development, change management, organizational culture, entrepreneurial opportunity, and ethical and regulatory implications of AI.

The report, featuring five articles produced by MIT Sloan’s Ideas Made to Matter, was in response to a growing need for strategic AI use cases. In a recent MIT Technology Review Insights survey, 82% of C-suite leaders reported that scaling AI or generative AI use cases to create business value was a top priority for their organization. The “CDO Agenda 2024” report co-written by Thomas H. Davenport, a visiting scholar at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, found that 80% of chief data officers believe generative AI will transform their business environment.

Report content includes:
 

• ‘Leading the AI-Driven Organization,’ adapted from senior lecturer Paul McDonagh-Smith’s popular MIT Sloan Executive Education course, in which he has shared how to create an AI playbook.

There is no singular route to large-scale AI deployment. Rather, McDonagh-Smith advises leaders to use their answers to three sets of questions to map out their organization’s journey.

• Research-driven advice for using generative AI to boost the productivity of the most highly-skilled workers, including insights on onboarding and role reconfiguration.

A new study on the impact of generative AI on highly skilled workers has found that when artificial intelligence is used within the boundary of its capabilities, it can improve a worker’s performance by nearly 40% compared with workers who don’t use it.
 

• From the Master in Business Analytics capstones projects, a look at how eight leading companies — including Pfizer and Comcast — have been using generative AI to execute with surprising speed. 

For the last few years, companies have been experimenting with use cases for generative artificial intelligence. At least one common theme is emerging: Generative AI, paired with data analytics, helps companies execute projects and solutions with speed.

• A summary of a study by professor Kate Kellogg on employee upskilling that has found relying on junior workers to educate senior colleagues about emerging technology is no longer a sufficient way to share knowledge, particularly when it comes to generative AI.

Rather than offering advice like the kind generative AI experts would share with users, junior professionals tend to recommend what Kellogg and her co-researchers call “novice AI risk mitigation tactics.”

• Strategies for retraining employees and using AI to find and close skills gaps. Researchers at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research have shown how artificial intelligence can help.

To retrain employees on digital skills, companies need precise insight into current workforce skills. Three steps for skills inference used by companies such as Johnson & Johnson include 1.) skills taxonomy 2.) skills evidence and 3.) skills assessment.

Ideas Made to Matter is a digital publication from MIT Sloan connecting business leaders with actionable insights from MIT experts who provide practical knowledge and strategies to advance readers’ work and careers.

To keep up with what MIT AI experts are advising, follow MIT Sloan on LinkedIn and sign up for Thinking Forward, an MIT insights email delivered every Tuesday morning.

About the MIT Sloan School of Management

The MIT Sloan School of Management is where smart, independent leaders come together to solve problems, create new organizations, and improve the world. Learn more at mitsloan.mit.edu.