IT’S TIME TO LEAD AND TIME IS TICKING.

INTRODUCTION

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere now in our world and in our societies. We are experiencing a new world order where AI is quickly becoming the new oxygen for humans to breathe in. Stanford professor, Andrew Ng, referred to AI as “the new electricity” and PWC is predicting that AI can increase the Global GDP by the equivalent of $15.7T by 2030. AI is much bigger than these forecasts.

Canada is a dominant force in the development of AI, on the R&D fronts with major centers in Alberta, Montreal and in Toronto. However what is different is that in almost every economical possibility we are not leading in APPLIED INNOVATION. Our patent leadership is lagging and the lead for AI Domination is accelerating. China has committed $150B by 2030; France will invest $1.85B by 2022, and the European Commission will contribute €1.5B. In the US, AI is no longer a nascent industry as VC investments are shifting to mature AI start-ups.

EMBRACING AI : CEO AND BOARD DIRECTOR IMPERATIVE

We have an alliance with The Bedford Group and we have been sharing our research and knowledge to CEOs and CHROs and our findings are companies are waiting too long to embrace AI.

Organizations in Canada embracing AI include TD Bank with the only Chief AI Officer to my knowledge in a bank with this title. The other banks are improving data management and operational controls to ensure AI enablement risk is tightly managed. AI Algo’s have also been used in the banks to predict customer share of wallet to even optimizing recommendations for new products and services, based on buyer profile data sets, while the Telcos are using AI for network capacity and intrusion detection, and have been for some time.

Other major logistic Canadian Brands are innovating with AI in Advanced Guided Selling areas, working with SalesChoice, and integrating, Salesforce’s powerful Visualization Toolkits (from Einstein) with SalesChoice’s predictive analytics Insight Engine, with the goal of prioritizing sales cycles, due to declining productivity rates of B2B Sales Professionals and the worrisome Distracted Economy, and constant interruptions from mobile, text messaging, and emails irrelevant to the priorities of the day.

I believe the human race needs to un-clutter its mind(s) from the data explosion, and AI will be a major weeding force guiding us to more white space where higher value customers can be sourced, or simply better culture fit matches. There is a reason why over 12% of the NA population is suffering from depression, and why B2B Sales productivity is plummeting to ranges of only 52%; human attention spans have dropped cognitively by 50% in the last 15 years, since the advent of mobile. There is an explosive growth in interest in meditating, yoga, teaching employees about “Calmness” to be able to control their thoughts more and focus more to increase declining productivity rates, and also reduce stress levels.

Looking ahead, a lot of wasted time is spent chasing the wrong customer profile. Hence, we are researching with IBM the opportunity to match sales buyer profile with customer buying profiles, much like dating ALGOs do. This is important as so often what creates a loss in a long sales cycle is personality or culture fit mismatch, versus the quality of the product or the pricing. Over 95% of people buy from people they like and retain partnerships due to the stickiness of human DNA, so spending the time with the right customers and nurturing them can be a major productivity boost to top line revenue growth as we identify the optimal personas and heartbeats that will align and build trust more.

CONCLUSION

No matter which AI method is being considered, leaders in Canada and in the USA must accelerate their adoption and utilization of AI. Donald Trump has declared an Order for all businesses to accelerate their adoption of AI. Canada’s Prime Minister is well advised to do the same – as its an economic imperative for Canada to advance with Applied AI Solutions – and in particular invest in emerging Canadian AI companies to grow our innovation and GDP Wealth and recognize we deserve more than a Branch Factory mentality.

I feel compelled to be bolder and have more courage, having recently won the MindBridge AI ‘AI Leader of the Year’ Award, presented to my by Eli Fathi, Founder and CEO of MindBridge.ai and the late John Reid, Former President CATA, who have entrusted me to continue my AI Leadership and Innovation Advocacy work, as well as continue to advance women in STEM. For our great country to realize our economic growth goals it needs to be squarely from CEO’s and Board of Directors recognizing that they need to:

  1. Buy more Canadian AI Software emerging companies;
  2. Nurture them with a fierceness like their newborns;
  3. Accelerate developing patents in every company in Canada and;
  4. Educate leadership teams and organizational resources on the value and importance of AI to every company’s future growth, whether its small, medium or a large enterprise.

Canada needs to reinvent itself and AI allows a new source of transformational capability that if applied wisely will only ensure our children and their children have a stronger economic future. The impact to not get this right could send Canada into an economic crisis as the warning signs are there in our cracking innovation resiliency foundations, having not improved our innovation global standings/rankings in over ten years.

Its time for more Creative Tax Incentives to buy Canadian AI innovations and more importantly to take leadership responsibility at board of directors and CEO’s that they have a responsibility to modernize their organizations. They need to appreciate that AI, although not new tech, is often weak in skills in current IT organizations, particularly as Canada is made up of over 90% small business enterprises. So the imperative for small business education is even more urgent to get right.

– By Dr.Cindy Gordon, CEO and Founder, SalesChoice Inc.