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Do Doctors Need a DOS of Their Own Medicine?

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 13:40:02 GMT

When lives are at stake, you might expect medical professionals to embrace any tool that could help them make better diagnoses. Yet a surprising new study reveals that doctors' resistance to artificial intelligence may be putting patients at risk.

Code Blue Screen

A medical study was published last week that found doctors co-diagnosing using AI were more likely to get the diagnosis wrong because they disregarded the machine when it questioned their expertise.

This resistance to computer input has itself been given the diagnosis of “algorithmic aversion” – a cognitive risk factor most likely to be associated with people who are highly experienced or expert in their field.

The report, Large Language Model Influence on Diagnostic Reasoning (Goh et al., 2024) observed that when diagnosing medical conditions, Chat GPT-4 alone significantly outperformed doctors who were using GPT-4.

This output goes against the prevailing body of research which states that human + AI is the most effective collaboration, rather than AI alone or human alone.

For example, a 2023 Harvard report established workers using ChatGPT outperformed those who did not by 40% (Dell’Acqua et al., 2023). Similarly, a paper from MIT uncovered a 37% increase in productivity for workers using AI (Noy and Zhang, 2023) and GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke says that coders using AI in their work are 55% faster (Scheffler, 2023).

"when the AI model said “Hey Man! You might be wrong, these things don’t fit” they disregarded that”

Dr. Adam Rodman

Calling Dr Beep

Dr. Adam Rodman, one of the authors of the medical report explained in a podcast interview (Hard Fork, 00:31:00) that the doctors did not want to accept that the AI could be better than them at diagnosis, and would second guess what the AI suggested, and end up getting the diagnosis wrong.

Dr. Rodman explained that there were two factors at work in the outcome of their study, one was a lack of experience working with the AI technology and not being experienced at using detailed prompts to get good responses. But, the other reason was resistance by some doctors to having their medical opinion questioned by an AI chatbot.

“Some people didn’t quite know how to use a Language Model to get the most use out of it, so training is one factor” he said. “Number two though, when you look at the data, people liked it when the AI model said “oh, this is your idea, these are the things I agree with”. But when the AI model said “Hey Man! You might be wrong, these things don’t fit” they disregarded that”.

"the irony is medical breakthroughs have always required openness to unconventional ideas"

A hard pill to swallow

This type of resistance to AI input has been labelled ‘algorithmic aversion’ by Ethan Mollick, Professor of Management at Wharton, who specialises in researching how AI impacts entrepreneurship and innovation.

Mollick also suggests that the majority of us don’t really understand what AI does and we mostly use it like a search engine and get frustrated by the results.

He said if you’re not used to working with a chat bot “AI systems are surprisingly hard to get a handle on, resulting in a failure to benefit from their advice” (Mollick, 2024).

The irony is that medical breakthroughs have always required creative thinking and openness to unconventional ideas. When Ignaz Semmelweis first proposed that doctors should disinfect their hands with a chlorine solution between patients, he was ridiculed by his colleagues.

Semmelweis' idea was so radically different from the prevailing customs, habits and practices of the day that it was too challenging for his fellow physicians to accept. So antithetical were his basic hygiene ideas to the medical establishment that he even lost his job for suggesting that doctors were spreading bacterial infections by not properly disinfecting their hands (Pittet and Allegranzi, 2018).

"The future of medicine lies not in choosing between human expertise and artificial intelligence, but in learning to leverage both".

Algorithmic aversion appears to be a similar type of establishment thinking, symptomatic of a closed system - the antithesis of the creative mindset required to fully exploit the opportunities AI presents.

The hard pill to swallow may be that it is the doctors themselves who require a system update if they are going to fully realize the potential of this powerful new technology.

The future of medicine likely lies not in choosing between human expertise and artificial intelligence, but in learning to leverage both.

An AI a day keeps the errors away!

Artificially intelligent chatbots are a very different tool from the search engines we're used to. Chatbots are more like an incredibly forgetful but endlessly knowledgeable intern. You have to explain very carefully what you want, and understand that the chatbot doesn't necessarily remember any previous conversations and has absolutely no context.

"Treat AI like an infinitely patient new coworker" suggests Ethan Mollick, "a coworker who forgets everything you tell them each new conversation, one that comes highly recommended, but whose actual abilities are not that clear" (Mollick, 2024).

In order to learn how to work efficiently with these amnesiac colleagues Mollick advises spending around 10 hours simply talking with an AI chatbot to get used to how it works.

So maybe what the doctors need is not so much an apple a day, but a regular dose of AI chatbot exposure, to help them to get over their aversion to this potentially life-saving tech.

Bugs, Sass and Big Ideas

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 17:18:52 GMT

While AI giants predict computers running entire organisations, the fundamentals of human creativity – imagination and attitude – remain far beyond artificial intelligence's grasp.

The future isn't about AI replacing human creativity,

but rather liberating it.

Finding the bug in the machine

Exactly 80 years ago, in 1944 at Harvard University, the Havard Mark I computer was completed. It was a beast! A room-sized, electro-mechanical device, over 50 feet long and weighing in at a svelte five tonnes. There were about 750,000 parts, including a 50-foot camshaft that synchronized the machine's components, and it was used to support the US Navy during WW II (CHM, 2024).

One of the first programmers of this IBM mainframe computer, was a diminutive young mathematician, Ruth Noller. One day, the computer stopped working and Noller was tasked with finding the probelm.

She explored all the mechanical options, checked many of the 750,000 parts and finally, after many, many hours of manual work, she found the problem.

A small flying insect had got itself stuck in the mechanism. Noller pinned the culprit, a moth, to the top of the page of her logbook, with a note that she had found the problem – “a bug in the machine”. Which is why, to this day, all computer problems are called “bugs”. (SIG, 2018)

From creative thinking to innovation

Like many early computing pioneers, Noller's work with these first-generation machines sparked insights that reached far beyond technology.

Her experience debugging the Harvard Mark I - requiring both systematic analysis and creative problem-solving - influenced her ground breaking work on human creativity itself, and she established the academic research discipline of Creative Problem-Solving.

Drawing on her mathematical background, Noller established a rather elegant formula for creativity - C = ƒ a ( K, I, E ) which defines Creativity as the product of Knowledge , Imagination , and Evaluation , with positive Attitude being the force multiplier. (Isaksen, Dorval and Treffinger, 2011)

But how does this creative thinking translate into business value? Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus Theodore (Ted) Levitt provided the crucial link.

Levitt's influential distinction between creativity and innovation frames them as passive and active processes: "creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things," (Levitt, T., 2008).

This means while creativity can exist in isolation, innovation - the lifeblood of business success - cannot exist without first engaging in creative thinking. It's a crucial driver for developing the new goods, services, and business models that generate fresh income streams.

Future Thinking

Creative thinking is a hot topic for business right now. Analytical and Creative thinking are the two skills most required by businesses worldwide according to The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report (WEF, 2023).

This global survey is a cross-section of 803 of the world’s largest employers, collectively employing more than 11.3 million workers across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from all world regions.

"Analytical and Creative thinking are the two skills most required by businesses worldwide"

Future of Jobs, WEF 2023

Earlier this year, banking giants HSBC published a report on the future of the workplace called Digital Horizons (HSBC, 2024). It forecasts businesses imperatives for 2030.

In amongst the more obvious nods to automating and implementing new technology, the report squarely focuses on the subject of creativity. It goes so far as to describe a future office as a highly creative research lab, where innovation and creativity are key activities.

After all, if the technology can do the mundane and repetitive tasks, it frees up the highly valuable and experienced human workforce to focus on the added value innovation work. "Vision and imagination will be essential workforce skills – and they will need to be taught” predicts the authors.

Which begs the question - taught to whom? You may not be surprised to read that the AI entrepreneurs think that they can build super intelligent machines to do all the creative thinking stuff for us.

AI as CEO

September 2024 kicked off with some bold claims in the AI world. OpenAI's new model, o1-preview, has reportedly reached level two of their self-designed five stage evolution to artificial general intelligence (AGI).

AGI is predicted by the tech bros to become an independent technology that can understand the world and flexibly adapt to novel information and circumstances, equal to, or better than, human capability.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman envisions this journey progressing as follows:

chatbots like the current GPT models
reasoning like the newest Open AI model, 01-preview
autonomous agents that can get on with some tasks without any help
AI that is capable of genuine innovation
AI capable of running entire organizations without any human input

(Cook, 2024)

Altman claims the newly launched 01-preview model has achieved level 2 - reasoning, and that we’ll be at level five within ten years.

What does that mean for the global workforce? Will we be redundant within a decade? Our jobs outsourced to 24-hour, always-on, digital networks of nodes, switches, routers and algorithms?

Well, maybe. And maybe not…

Human Creativity: Our Competitive Edge

Remember Professor Noller's creativity formula? C = ƒ a ( K, I, E ) where Creativity is the product of the person's Knowledge, Imagination , and Evaluation , multiplied by their positive mental Attitude . When we map this against AI capabilities, an interesting pattern emerges.

Knowledge and Evaluation are AI's strong suits. OpenAI has already processed an astounding 570GB of datasets - some 10 trillion words - to train their chatbots, far exceeding what any human could memorize. These systems can evaluate information at speeds that make human analysis look glacial by comparison.

But here's where it gets interesting: Imagination and Attitude - the remaining elements of Noller's formula - represent uniquely human territories.

Imagination , defined as "the act or power of forming a mental picture of something not present and especially of something one has not known or experienced" (Merriam-Webster, 2024b), requires a leap beyond mere data processing.

Similarly, Attitude - "a feeling or emotion toward a fact or state" (Merriam-Webster, 2024a) - demands subjective, emotional engagement that mathematical models, however sophisticated, cannot truly replicate.

"the human capacity for imaginative leaps

and emotional intelligence transforms computational power into genuine innovation"

Attitude and Imagination aren't just theoretical limitations. In fact, they define exactly how humans and AI should collaborate in the workplace.

While AI excels at processing vast amounts of data and identifying patterns, it's the human capacity for imaginative leaps and emotional intelligence that transforms this computational power into genuine innovation.

The real competitive advantage, therefore, lies in strategic human-AI collaboration. By letting AI handle the heavy lifting of data processing and routine analysis, we free up human professionals to focus on what they do best: applying imagination and attitude to creative problem-solving. It's about using AI not to replace human creativity, but to amplify it.

Eighty years on from computers the size of rooms, we've learned that the most powerful solutions come not from machines alone, but from the synergy between human creativity and computational capability.

Nowadays, we can let the computers do their own bug hunting, while the human brain focuses on what it does best - generating those big, bold ideas that no algorithm can predict.

Institute for Creativity and AI

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 14:45:46 GMT

The future of Creativity and AI

Creative thinking is becoming something of a hot topic in business circles these days.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report showed that analytical thinking and creative thinking

are currently the top two skills required by global businesses, closely followed by technological literacy (Future of Jobs, WEO, 2023).

Banking giants HSBC forecasts the future office as a "highly creative research lab, where innovation and creativity are key activities" (HSBC, 2024). In the same report HSBC also consider the impact of AI and other advanced technology on the workplace.

The Institute for AI and Creativity (ICAI)

Bringing both these themes of creativity and new tech together is the job of the newly inaugurated Institute for Creativity and AI (ICAI), based at City & St George's, University of London.

Working collaboratively across all the specialisms of the university's six schools - The City Law School, School of Health & Psychological Sciences, Bayes Business School, the School of Communication & Creativity; the School of Science & Technology; and the School of Policy & Global Affairs - ICAI has three main goals:

Understand current creative work challenges in presence of AI technologies
Research and develop new co-creative AI tools to augment work in different professions
Investigate how AI will impact these professions and their organisations

"If thinking happens when we're writing,

and we get rid of the writing -

what happens to the thinking?"

Dr Richard Banks, Principal Design Manager, Microsoft Research UK

At the launch event for the Institute, Microsoft's Dr Richard Banks, discussed thinking as an intrinsic activity for human cognition. " If thinking happens when we're writing, and we get rid of the writing - what happens to the thinking?" he asked, as part of his demonstration into the types of activities that he and his team are working on at Microsoft to develop apps that support human creative thinking.

The Director of the new Institute, Professor Neil Maiden said that the ICAI will provide a space to collaborate, where academics, researchers and businesses can exchange ideas, and explore challenges and opportunities.

In addition, working across the breadth of the university enables the development of more ambitious interdisciplinary research proposals, that can attract increased grant funding. And, in turn, this ambitious research should be able to deliver impact in the important field of creative work via AI, both nationally and internationally.

"How we grasp the immense potential of artificial intelligence across key sectors, and negotiate the tests it puts forward" Maiden said, "will determine how we create then innovate to improve business growth, education, healthcare, journalism, law and many other sectors for generations to come".

Read more about the launch of the Institute here

Visit the homepage of the Institute for Creativity and AI

Try one of our creativity enhancing tools for business here

Uncovering creative options

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 15:59:18 GMT

Find out more about Insights and Business Sparks, download the brochure below

The Creative Edge Amsterdam

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 18:24:09 GMT

"AI will not replace humans. Humans using AI will replace those that aren‘t"

Vera Blažević, Associate Professor of Marketing,

Radboud University

Vera Blažević, Associate Professor of Marketing, Radboud University explained how AI will help us overcome the limitations of traditional creativity techniques, in her brilliant and myth-busting talk.

Professor Neil Maiden introduced two cutting edge AI tools for business innovation.

Business-Sparks for business leaders and consultants
Insights for strategy leaders and senior executives dissatisfied with time consuming and costly innovation work.

Download the presentations from our workshop for senior leaders at the links below

Watch our brief video summary of the event

Would you would like to host a similar workshop to keep your teams up to date with what's happening in GenAI and business innovation?

Our mission is to help businesses understand and engage with new technology.

We can provide speakers and content free of charge.

Learning to Love AI

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 17:39:28 GMT

As the AI boom continues to bounce around the world. Businesses leaders of all stripes are hiding behind their hands wondering what an appropriate response to this noisy new chat bot bubble should be? This post explores the anxiety of AI, what businesses really need to be asking themselves and makes some recommendations on how to spread the AI love.

Just 10% of businesses are ready for AI

There seems to be a lot of confusion, mistrust and inertia among businesses, particularly SMEs, when it comes to AI.

A global survey of more than 300 business leaders by MIT Technology Review Insight (MIT, 2024) found that while everyone is talking about it about (75% of respondents experimented with generative AI in 2023) hardly anybody is actually using it - just 9% said they had adopted the technology, with limited deployment in their businesses.

Large multi-national enterprises are more on it. IBM’s data shows 42% of enterprise-scale organizations (over 1,000 employees) have AI actively in use in their businesses. Currently this tech is largely used to automate process and administration tasks, hardly scratching the surface of the productivity gains generative AI can bring to the party. (IBM, 2024).

And while the UK Govt launches its flagship initiative, the AI Opportunity Forum, (UK Govt., 2024) to boost the adoption of AI in the private sector, the UK’s Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) reports almost half (40%) of small business owners don’t have the time to develop new ideas or adopt technologies to innovate their business. UK SMEs say cost is a barrier (28%) and a further 17% feel that they lack the know-how to implement changes (Russell, 2023)

Small wonder then that the AI Opportunity Forum reckons just one-in-ten UK business organisations are currently fully prepared to roll out the technology (UK Govt., 2024)

Driving AI uptake

UK Government's objective is to develop “AI Solutions” for industry. There is currently £5 million up for grabs via UKRI's Bridge AI initiative, to fund innovation projects that will help shift the dial on the UK’s stagnant productivity. In the 12 years to 2022, the annual average growth in UK GDP per hour worked has stayed around 0.5% - we’re miles behind our French and German peers and have been for over a decade.

And this is despite the fact that the UK ranks 4th for innovation globally making us one of the most innovative countries on the planet (Global Innovation Index 2023). Brilliantly, as a country, we excel in the innovation of artificial intelligence, quantum technology and synthetic biology. Less brilliant, we are quite evidently pants at exploiting our IP, which is concentrated among a few companies and not diffused throughout the economy.

The Productivity Institute identifies three fundamental levers to address the UK’s chronic productivity underperformance. Alongside the need for more investment, and more joined-up-policy-making, is the need to spread innovation out across all of the UK’s economic activities. This means both the application and, crucially, the commercialisation of new technologies.

Through their Bridge AI initiatives (Innovate UK Business Connect, 2024), UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) are focused on valiantly trying to broker partnerships between the AI innovators and those companies that can help them to create killer apps for successful commercial exploitation.

"the spread of solutions

requires communication and belief "

Spread the love

When it comes to diffusion of innovation communication is key, as Andy Wilkins, Honorary Visiting Fellow, patiently explains in his Delivering Innovation module, part of the Masters in business Innovation, Creativity and Leadership (Bayes Business School, 2023).

Andy's Critical Path to Innovation Valorisation model (2024) shows that the spread of solutions into markets requires clear communication and absolute belief that the product meets the need. The model starts with a clearly identified need for something that is better or different than currently available; this develops into an idea that is new and adds value in the specific domain; through the application of resources and discipline the idea develops into a novel solution, which can then be diffused. This diffusion requires effective communication resulting in affirmation and belief via feedback and testing that the solution is robust and useful. Which leads to valorisation, the conversion of your idea into commercial products that sell and generate profit. (Table 1)

Beware the AIs of March

On a chilly day at the end of March, 50 or so people gathered in central London for a “Collaboration Building Workshop”. Hosted by UKRI as part of its Bridge AI scheme to match-make partnerships between SMEs and academic researchers.

There was a strong whiff of AI terror coming from SMEs in the room. These business owners and leaders came to the event out of a mixture of curiosity, apprehension, and a desire to understand what AI can do for their businesses.

The diffusion part of the innovation valorisation model was neatly demonstrated in my group at the collaboration-building workshop, where misunderstandings and mistrust about this new technology were the norm at the start.

We were a mixed bag of academics, tech entrepreneurs and SMEs, and we had a wide ranging professional backgrounds. However the SMEs leaders were like rabbits in the headlights of the oncoming tech truck roaring towards them. “Is this what we should be doing?”; “It’s too scientific”; and “I’m lost” were common refrains.

Meanwhile the techies were talking in tech jargon, earnestly trying to explain algorithms, heuristics, generative AI and large language models, which was only making things worse for the bewildered SMEs. They might as well have been talking in ancient hieroglyphics for all the sense it was making to the business owners.

Start with the problem

It was the entrepreneurs and consultants at the table who pulled the spiralling conversation back to reality. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking AI overlords or home-made horse-shoes, they said, the starting point is always the same in business: What is the problem?

It’s true that new technology can, and will, replace some jobs. That doesn’t mean it will replace people. There is always a need to have humans in the loop. But what the humans do may change. The consensus was that AI makes it easier to lean-in to your business strengths, and explore efficiencies of process, and how to outsource the things you don’t need or don't have the time or specialisation to do in your business.

Do not be dazzled by the sci-fi ballyhoo and the big words. Business leaders do not need to understand it. They do not need to be scared of it. AI is just another tool.

Is it a tool you need in your business? The answer to that lies in the problem.

Peter Drucker, the legendary management thinker and author, advised that identifying the core issues and asking the right questions is crucial to properly diagnosing both the current situation and then the appropriate future solution. " The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers" he said. "The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions". (Drucker 2010)

" The most serious mistakes are not

being made as a result of wrong answers.

The truly dangerous thing is asking

the wrong questions "

Identify the challenges

In our conversation at the Collaboration Building Workshop, we all agreed that as artificial intelligence transforms industries, there is a critical need to incentivize and support businesses in adopting these powerful technologies. However, a lack of trust and common language between the tech sector and commercial enterprises poses a major barrier, creates confusion and means that many businesses can't see the wood for the trees, when it comes to what AI could do for them.

To drive AI adoption, we must have a strategy to tackle the challenges we identified in our workshop:

Lack of trust between tech providers and businesses
Jargon and complexity that makes AI difficult to understand
Need for businesses to align AI with their core purpose, principles and values
Absence of effective change agents to broker connections

Consider solutions

Several ideas emerged during the course of the day, and these included:

Provide free, easily accessible specialist advisors to guide businesses
Host highly curated, sector-specific events to showcase AI opportunities
Foster a national conversation with inspiring case studies
Centralize existing AI resources into one comprehensive hub
Take a problem-focused approach, not just product pitches

Learning to love AI

Ultimately, we all agreed that the goal must be to create a better bridge between businesses and AI solutions. This could involve improved B2B marketing focused on real business needs rather than just concepts.

Developing checklists and questionnaires could help identify AI use cases tailored to specific businesses. Offering a safe environment where businesses can ask "stupid questions" without judgment could increase confidence. Enabling useful connections between businesses, tech firms, and advisors could facilitate mutually beneficial relationships.

By taking a practical, education-focused approach, we can overcome the trust gap and language barriers that currently hinder AI adoption. This will empower businesses to truly understand AI's potential and embark on their digital transformation journey with confidence.

Let's take away the fear and really accelerate the diffusion of this game-changing tech across all of our business landscape. So that more than one in ten businesses can really benefit from the productivity uplift these powerful new tools can offer.

The Creative Edge Conference

cebai@city.ac.uk (Sam Steele) — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 19:04:21 GMT

“Business consultants who use AI achieved 40% improvement in the

quality of their work output

compared to those who didn’t”

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier, (September 15, 2023)

Harvard Business School, Working Paper No. 24-013

Background

Introduction to Business Sparks presentation, Professor Neil Maiden

The Benefits of Generative AI for Business Strategy & Innovation presentation, Professor Vera Blazevic

How successful business build cognitive creativity skills in their workforce, Mark Carberry

Background

The third annual conference of the Centre for Creativity enabled by AI, was held at Bayes Business School in November 2023. Conference presentations demonstrated how AI can enhance innovation at work and accelerate commercial objectives.

The keynote speaker, Professor Neil Maiden introduced Business-Sparks™ the new AI tool for business leaders and consultants. He explained the benefits of combining curated expertise, from the world-class Bayes Business School faculty, with AI reasoning. The output is faster, cheaper advice around business challenges and business models.

Mark Carberry, Director of Executive Education at Bayes Business School closed our conference by detailing how organisations can use academic resources like ours to supports digital transformation. He showed some impact studies on businesses who have applied world-class consultancy, and culture change programmes that are created in higher education, which are cost effective and game-changing.

Watch, read and download the presentations

Change or AI

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 15:56:22 GMT

How AI enables business innovation

Change is happening faster than ever

The very fast pace of change is a challenge for businesses. It took 16 years to achieve 100m mobile phone users. In 2023 Chat-GPT clocked-up 100m users in just two months (Milmo, 2023) making it the fastest consumer tech adoption the world has ever seen.

AI is a technology wave that is so speedy, many people are still trying to understand how to best use it and apply it in their organisations, particularly in knowledge-based industries that value know-how over data analytics.

AI helps humans be more creative

Ongoing research at Radboud University in the Netherlands is demonstrating how AI will help overcome the limitations of traditional creativity techniques (Dr Vera Blazevic - The Benefits of Generative AI for Business Strategy and Innovation, 2023). Their work highlights that group dynamics in a brainstorming situation often creates lower quality ideation than enabling people to work alone with the help of an AI assistant.

A recent study from Harvard clearly showed that AI helped workers to produce higher quality work. Knowledge workers who were operating below the average threshold increased their performance by 43% (Dell’Acqua et al., 2023).

“businesses must innovate their businesses models”.

AI + culture change

Adopting AI by itself is not enough. At the November 2023 Be the Business Conference in Manchester, Beyond The Hype: Making AI Work For Business, speaker Tera Allas CBE, Director of Research and Economics at McKinsey said “productivity is only going to be transformed by changing habits, and that is a leadership challenge”.

It was a sentiment echoed by Prof. Bart Van Ark, Managing Director of The Productivity Institute, at the same event. Van Ark explained the benefits of AI as two-pronged. “Low hanging fruit is getting LLMs to assist you in complex routine tasks” he said. “AI will make business operations more efficient, but that is not the same as increasing growth”.

“The higher fruit that businesses must reach for is to innovate their businesses models, because that is what will directly affect growth”.

Our aim is to connect with more businesses and help them to understand how to use the emerging benefits of AI for business innovation, creativity and strategy.

"Analytical thinking is the number one skill workers will require"

The future is soft

The World Economic Forum predicts that between now and 2027, 44% of workers’ core skills will be disrupted, because technology is moving faster than companies can design and scale up their training programmes (WEF, 2023).

Cognitive skills and other “soft” skills, make up most of the top ten list of desired abilities. Analytical thinking is the number one skill workers will require in the next few years, and creative thinking comes in second place. Cognitive skills are becoming paramount, reflecting the increasing importance of complex problem-solving in the workplace.

Skills that we don’t prioritise in our education, with the UK National curriculum criticized as being so rule-focused it “crushes creativity” (Harris, 2016)

Business Sparks specifically supports these most important human thinking skills and enable businesses and individuals to generate innovative solutions to any strategic issues they are facing.

More than a chatbot

Unlike AI chatbots, our tools do not simply provide answers to questions, based on information that already exists on the internet. Business Sparks is explicitly coded, by domain experts, to ask the user relevant questions, to spark their own creative thought process, based on their own problem statement.

We use AI to augment and empower human creativity, not replace it.

Prime and reason

Before the AI explosion of the past 12 months, we were already building our own search algorithms using automated analogical reasoning. Analogical reasoning is a fundamental process of human cognition and creative problem solving.

Since Open AI changed the Chatbot game, we have also incorporated ChatGPT into the process. But, including the popular search and retrieval parsing partner is a relatively small update, our biggest USP remains heuristic programming.

We effectively use cognitive science principles that revolve around 'how humans think' and apply programmed problem solving methodologies like SCAMPER, constraint removal, creativity triggers, and more, to prompt the user to explore their problem statement and both generate and then edit down ideas.

Going round in circles

We have also incorporated circular design into our tools, working with the British Design Council and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

A co mpanion tool to Business Sparks, Design Sparks , is a lightweight tool for product and service designers. It can generate prompts specifically around preventing waste and pollution and creating durable, reusable, repairable and recyclable products.

Knowledge hungry

Don't let years of data gathering and report-writing go to waste! You can use our tools as they are, or tailor them to your own business needs. Embed our tech in your business to extract new ideas from all your existing business information. Our proprietary AI helps you to generate new insights in the knowledge your have stored in your organisation.

We can help your people to engage their creative faculties to innovate new solutions and address the fast moving modern business landscape.