Leading businesses reveal the power of combining human ingenuity with AI

Businesses of all sizes are experiencing exceptional disruption and change as they grapple with strategies to stabilize and return to growth. In this new environment, human ingenuity, innovation and adaptability will be critically important.

As a result of COVID-19, businesses’ digital transformation is accelerating more rapidly than ever before. As Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, recently observed during our earnings announcement, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”

However, as people move to distributed working and companies move essential workloads to the cloud, what isn’t instantly apparent is the growing role artificial intelligence (AI) is playing at the heart of digital transformation. For some organizations, its use had already accelerated. Others are looking at bringing forward the benefits AI can deliver.

AI is helping us discover, learn, ideate and make decisions. It’s making business operations more efficient, enhancing product and service development, and enabling new customer experiences. In industries like health care, it’s helping improve patient outcomes and save lives.

Before the pandemic, most of our customers were addressing a similar challenge: How do they ensure their people have the right skills and mindset to thrive in a world where AI is driving real business impact?

To learn more, Microsoft carried out a major international research project* focusing on AI and skills, and discovered the most successful organizations are as focused on developing the skills of their people as they are with deploying new AI-powered technology.

The business environment has changed significantly over the past few months, but the insights we gathered from our research, and the roadmap they provide, still hold true.

The core finding: “In this new environment, companies will need ingenuity to help restart their businesses,” says Azeem Azhar, AI industry expert and founder of the Exponential View. “In the context of new rules for engaging with customers, partners and stakeholders, innovative and adaptable organizations will do better. This research identifies that AI-leading firms are better positioned because they are investing more in a wide range of skills and are more focused on how new technology can augment their workers.”

The link between AI, skills and business value

The research, which spoke to 12,000 directors and employees at businesses across 20 countries, highlighted what we’ve suspected. Companies farthest along their AI journey are seeing the most value from the technology. Business leaders within AI-mature companies were predicting greater growth than leaders of companies less advanced on the AI journey.

However, this success isn’t simply about throwing more AI at the business. Instead we see that these organizations are remarkably focused on cultivating the skills of their people.

Actionable insights for business leaders

• Benchmark your business: What does your skills mix look like in comparison to businesses at a similar stage of AI maturity, and those further ahead?
• Confidence in the return on AI and skills is important: When assessing business outcomes and value, consider the contribution of technology, skills and culture.
• Discover best practices for considering your approach to AI with Microsoft’s AI Business School, a free online master class designed for business leaders.

In fact, 93% of senior executives at AI-leading firms say they are actively building the skills of their workers or have plans to. The employees within these AI-leading companies corroborate this, with nearly two-thirds (64%) saying they have already benefitted from reskilling programs, and 70% indicating that they are confident their employers are preparing them for the AI world.

These percentages drop considerably across businesses that are less advanced with AI deployment – showing the importance of upskilling as companies bring more AI into their business.

What’s also interesting are the skills employers are looking for as AI becomes more prevalent. Data analysis and programming are priorities, but so too are communications and negotiations, leadership and management.

Why are we seeing successful businesses prioritizing such a wide range of skills?

Leading businesses understand that algorithms are incredibly useful at pulling insights from massive data sets and helping reduce repetitive tasks. However, they also realize that is only half of the equation. The other element is maximizing people’s ability to take AI-driven insights and use them in a creative way to solve challenges and find new opportunities. It’s about empowering people to effectively use the time that’s freed up by AI taking on more repetitive tasks. This is precious time that can be spent with customers, collaborating with colleagues and focusing on professional development.

Actionable insights for business leaders

• Develop a holistic skilling strategy to benefit from both AI automation and augmentation: Businesses that are gaining the most strategic value from AI have more of the skills needed to build and supervise AI, but also the skills to work alongside AI. They understand how AI can augment employee skills – and are focused on building out and enhancing those skills within their workforce.
• Actively seek out and learn from examples of how others are unlocking human ingenuity with AI: In looking at other use cases, seek to understand the mix of skills and technology that led to success – and how that evolved over time.
• Understand where employees want to use time freed up by AI – and help channel how they reinvest it: Identify opportunities to promote learning programs to facilitate skills development, as well as give guidance on how employees can redeploy time and energy to solving, innovating and collaborating against key business priorities.

Actionable insights for business leaders

• Your employees are highly motivated to learn – consider a flexible, continuous learning program: Giving employees the freedom to choose which skills they cultivate is the No. 1 way to ensure participation in learning programs. Consider how to map flexible career development paths – and help guide employees in their selections, to ensure it works for them and for the business.
• Communicate effectively about your plans to equip employees with the key skills they need in a world of AI: This will not only help employees better understand the learning opportunities open to them, it will help enhance your employer brand and bolster employee engagement.
• Discover ways to foster an AI-ready culture in your business and a framework to drive that change in your organization.

Further supporting the notion that we’re seeing an emergence of a learn-it-all culture across enterprises, nine out of 10 employees (92%) are keen to take part in AI reskilling initiatives.

This points to a virtuous circle emerging as companies continue their journey. Today’s AI-leading businesses have seen that having the right skills enables them to unlock more value from AI, which encourages them to extend their use of AI and, in turn, continue in up-skilling their organization.