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Is it absolutely Necessary to use AI today just because the World is Talking about it?

19/5/2025

This is a great question. Thank you for your courage and First Principles Thinking to even ask this question.

I would say it is important to learn about and understand AI because with the higher collective intelligence of humans and computers, how we do anything and everything will shift just as the coming of Internet shifted how we did anything and everything.

When we learn and understand something, we can use it effectively as a tool to fulfil the Purpose of our Business and achieve our Big Hairy Audacious Goal; and through that fulfil our Purpose this Lifetime through our work and realize our highest potential; supporting us to realize our impossible, unimaginable, crazy-big dreams and have it all with ease and grace.

I believe AI will accelerate the evolution of human beings to Gear 5 Consciousness by being an external force to make human beings increase their intellectual intelligence by having to partner with more intelligent computers and having to learn a lot more as an outcome of that.

We become like the company we keep. Our company in the form of computers is becoming far more intelligent. That will have a ripple effect in humans becoming far more intelligent across different dimensions because we are wired to learn, grow and evolve. The humans who learn, grow and evolve will thrive, following Thrival of the Fittest principle. In the earlier phase of evolution of our species, it was Charles Darwin's Survival of the Fittest principle which was at play. In the current phase of the evolution of our species from good to great, from Fear Consciousness to Love Consciousness; it is Thrival of the Fittest principle which is at play. Fittest in this context is being at the highest level of health, fitness and joyous well-being across all our 5 bodies - physical, energy, emotional, mental, spiritual.

AI will contribute to more and more humans going on their good to great journeys to strengthen their emotional Intelligence, Intuitive Intelligence / Inner Wisdom and Spiritual Intelligence; ultimately accelerating our species to our next level of evolution - the Gear 5 Human.

What will remain the same as far as business is concerned is that business will continue to remain about serving the customer. Those businesses who understand that the centre of the Universe is their customer; and not AI / technology or their product / service or their craft / domain; are the businesses which will march forth towards claiming their right to be a great business.

A quick definition of strategy is that it is a structure of success to make a massive difference to the customer.

Mediocre businesses will die because they will become blinded with the shine of a new toy called AI and over-invest and wrong-invest in it; while wise great businesses will use AI to make an even bigger difference to their employees, customers and other stake-holders.

Let's keep taking Actions of Courage to master and dissolve Fear, an inheritance of our species, to transform what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man, what it means to be a leader, what it means to be a business and what it means to be a human being to joyously lead ourselves and our work from good to great, realize our dreams and have it all with ease and grace; while having lots of fun and adventure along the way.

Loving you,
j.

Hat Tip: Amrita 💜

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Understanding AI - Part 2

13/5/2025

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Learnings from Module 2 of the online AI program from MIT - Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy:

My favourite learning is number 15.

1. Machine learning has now come to dominate the field of artificial intelligence, and it can be used in many ways in business, including sensing, predicting and generating.

2. What the machine learning is all about is finding underlying patterns in big amounts of data, which turns out to be a very useful thing because sometimes it finds patterns that humans might have never noticed before.

3. What Computers may well be able to do far better than people:

They are already much better than we are at arithmetic and have been for decades, but now with these new machine learning techniques, computers are increasingly able to see patterns in vast amounts of data that we humans would never have been able to notice, but may well be very important.

4. If you can anticipate a way of using artificial intelligence to do something better than your competitors, or faster, or cheaper, but better in some way or maybe even do something that your competitors never even thought of doing, that’s a very interesting strategic possibility.

5. Companies who have big amounts of data … have a big strategic advantage over those who don’t.

6. Advice to entrepreneurs is to focus on solving fundamental customer problems rather than merely implementing AI.

7. For existing businesses, decisions should be based on value propositions and return on investment.

8. One very important thing for any company is you have to be positioned in a way that the technology can be adopted by the users where they can generate the value out of it.

9. The benefit of the AI ... is it does things faster, better, cheaper more accurately.

10. AI will help make do more high-quality work at lower cost.

11. The most important thing when starting an AI company is to really be solving an important unmet problem for your customers. That is 100 times infinitely more important than whether AI is or is not a part of the solution.

What's important - Really understanding the problems, really understanding why current technology, much of which today will be starting to incorporate AI, is unable to solve that and why your solution is going to be so much better than what’s currently out there that people will switch from what they are currently doing and begin adopting your technology, and how will that grow over time?

12. Start from the business fundamentals, and AI may or may not be useful here. There is a lot of interest, a lot of buzz around AI. It’s not obvious that following that is even the best strategic move.

It may be being the non-AI which is the best strategic move.

Everyone’s going to be looking with an AI lens about what problems can be solved with AI. Certain problems that can’t be solved with AI might actually be the new places for industry leading businesses because they are probably less crowded. Really understand the competitive landscape, the problems your customers have and not simply jumping to AI being the solution.

13. An AI will be the most disruptive part of your business because so many people are working on it. There are so many dollars already been thrown at it. They are so many great tools being released by very large tech companies that sometimes it’s going to be the customer relationships, customer integrations that are far more defensible overtime.

14. You should be judging the product on its merits and the solution on its merits. Don’t be unduly fed by feeling that you need to use AI to stay ahead. This field will continue moving. Continue getting better, just being very objective and understanding what is your value proposition, what is the return on investment, when will the timing be correct.

Don’t make this mistake of thinking if we can’t do it today, it won’t be doing it in three years because sometimes you need to get ahead of it.

15. Don’t focus on the AI, focus on the actual solution and how it is generating value for your customers.

16. Don’t use AI just because it’s cool. Use it because it’s actually useful either now or in the foreseeable future.

17. People aren’t going to lose their jobs to AI. People are going to lose their jobs to people who use AI.

Keep learning, implementing and contributing to joyously lead yourself and your business from good to great, realize your dreams and have it all with ease and grace; while having lots of fun and adventure along the way 💜

Loving you,
j.

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Understanding AI

6/5/2025

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As a way to warm-up for the in-person AI program at MIT, USA this November, I started my AI learning journey through an online program with MIT 3 weeks back - Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy.

Why learn AI as part of my Craft Mastery?

Because AI is now a part of RYD Business Excellence journey as AI is already disrupting businesses across industries. If our big hairy audacious goal is to nurture great businesses from our land, then we have to disrupt our own business model much before it gets disrupted to make a much bigger difference to our customers.

Here are my top 5 learnings and insights from the online MIT AI program so far:

1. The real question about AI is - How can people and computers be connected so that collectively they act more intelligently than any person, group or computer has ever done before?

It is not a battle between humans and AI. It is a partnership between humans and AI to make a much bigger difference in the world through collective intelligence of humans and AI.

Even more powerful question is - How can this human-computer system (also known as collective intelligence) improve over time to contribute to make our world a better place in ways not possible before?

2. For AI to be of value to our business, it is important to have an understanding of our business strategy which needs to be deeply thought through and executed; instead of throwing darts while blind-folded hoping one of the darts will hit the bulls-eye.

3. Your strategy for using AI should be consistent with your company's strategic approach in general. As per Michael Porter, businesses can choose one of the four strategic approaches - Cost Leadership, Differentiation, Cost Focus and Differentiation Focus.

From Competitive Advantage by Michael Porter, a firm's relative position within its industry determines whether a firm's profitability is above or below the industry average. The fundamental basis of above average profitability in the long run is sustainable competitive advantage. There are two basic types of competitive advantage a firm can possess: low cost or differentiation.

The two basic types of competitive advantage combined with whether the company is operating industry wide or focussed on a particular customer segment leads to three generic strategies for achieving above average performance in an industry: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. The focus strategy has two variants: cost focus and differentiation focus.

i. Cost Leadership
In cost leadership, a firm sets out to become the low cost producer in its industry. The sources of cost advantage are varied and depend on the structure of the industry. They may include the pursuit of economies of scale, proprietary technology, preferential access to raw materials and other factors.

A low cost producer must find and exploit all sources of cost advantage. If a firm can achieve and sustain overall cost leadership, then it will be an above average performer in its industry, provided it can command prices at or near the industry average.

ii. Differentiation
In a differentiation strategy, a firm seeks to be unique in its industry along some dimensions that are widely valued by buyers. It selects one or more attributes that many buyers in an industry perceive as important, and uniquely positions itself to meet those needs. It is rewarded for its uniqueness with a premium price.

iii. Focus
The generic strategy of focus rests on the choice of a narrow competitive scope within an industry. The focuser selects a customer segment or a group of customer segments in the industry and tailors its strategy to serving them to the exclusion of others.
The focus strategy has two variants.
a. In Cost Focus, a firm seeks a cost advantage in its target segment,
while
b. In Differentiation Focus, a firm seeks differentiation in its target segment.

Both variants of the focus strategy rest on differences between a focuser's target segment and other segments in the industry. The target segments must either have buyers with unusual needs or else the production and delivery system that best serves the target segment must differ from that of other industry segments.

Cost focus exploits differences in cost behaviour in some segments, while differentiation focus exploits the special needs of buyers in certain segments.

Source of the image: https://www.consuunt.com/porters-generic-strategies/

Your company's strategic approach will help you understand what business problem to use AI for to make a bigger impact through your business.

4. AI feeds on data. If you are not collecting vast amount of data in a structured way, then learning about AI will not contribute to your business. This means putting in Process Excellence is a key input to AI implementation.

In our RYD Business Excellence journey, make your organization AI-intelligent when your business is on Mountain 3 (Mountain of Growth) to finally implement AI in Mountain 4 (Mountain of Scale) to scale your business with ease, grace and velocity.

5. What becomes amply clear is that running businesses with a 'jugaad' attitude is no longer a viable way forward. It is important to become a business scientist to learn the art, science and math of building a great business; and implement that with the meticulousness of a scientist. As we do that, we will learn AI along the way to make a massive difference in the world living our purpose through our business.

AI has further validated that our best friend on our good to great journey is Joy of Learning.

Keep learning, implementing and contributing to joyously lead yourself and your business from good to great, realize your dreams and have it all with ease and grace; while having lots of fun and adventure along the way 💜

Loving you,
j.

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Is it absolutely Necessary to use AI today just because the World is Talking about it?

Understanding AI - Part 2

Understanding AI

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​Realize Your Dreams Gym™for Business, Leadership and Life MasteryCentre for Transformational Leadership™ . Centre for Entrepreneurial Excellence™ . Centre for Personal Excellence™Mums At Work™ . Centre for Sports Excellence™ . Centre for Coaching Excellence™

Table of Contents

Is it absolutely Necessary to use AI today just because the World is Talking about it?

Understanding AI - Part 2

Understanding AI

Author

Archives

Categories

Home

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

LEADERSHIP

Personal EXCELLENCE

ARTICLES

Realize Your Dreams Gym™
for
Business, Leadership and Life Mastery
Centre for Transformational Leadership™ . Centre for Entrepreneurial Excellence™ . Centre for Personal Excellence™
Mums At Work™ . Centre for Sports Excellence™ . Centre for Coaching Excellence™