Generative AI has garnered hundreds of headlines across the globe in recent months, from EV battery development to the legal landscape for creators (think: the Hollywood screenwriters’ 148-day strike). As part of a series of “Grand Challenges,” generative AI was the opening panel discussion for Thought Into Action’s 2023-2024 Incubator.
Thought Into Action (TIA) – the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation’s flagship program now in its 15th year – had its kickoff weekend on campus September 22-24. Friday afternoon included a 90-minute session in , with the founders of , , and sharing insights and learnings from their Summer Accelerator experience as well as their time in the Incubator. Saturday morning the focus shifted to generative Artificial Intelligence.
The panel discussion – “The Implications of AI on Entrepreneurship and Innovation: New Business Opportunities and New Ways of Working” – like all four Grand Challenges this year are open to Incubator participants (entrepreneurs and mentors alike) as well as the broader 91鶹Ʒ and Hamilton communities. Future Grand Challenge topics will include sustainability on November 4, mental health and well-being on February 3, 2024, and a final panel discussion on March 23, 2024.
Moderated by Entrepreneur in Residence Travis Millman, the panel included:
- Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanfield, assistant professor of film and media studies
- Forrest Davis, assistant professor of computer science
- Nick Diana, assistant professor of computer science
- Gaurav Ragtah ’13, CEO and co-founder of Catalyze X, who was a past TIA participant and has served as a mentor in TIA for a number of years
Stemming from the notion that generative AI is a force multiplier, as well as a time and money saver, the panel discussion attuned to a number of issues relating to entrepreneurship and innovation. The discussion was billed as a way for the panelists to address both the upside and downside of generative AI, with particular attention to the implications it has for entrepreneurship and innovation.
These Grand Challenges are a new addition to the TIA program.
“(We) decided to put together several of these sessions over the course of the year to tackle big topics that we think have relevance to everyone in this room and beyond,” Millman said.
Following the panel discussion, TIA entrepreneurs and mentors on campus engaged in interactive ideation activities in a session led by professors Karen Harpp and Allison Zengilowski, and Ahmad Khazaee, director of creative technologies, engagement and support. These exercises encouraged entrepreneurs to think outside the box and consider how they might develop innovative solutions to the problems they are tackling.
The formal program on Saturday wrapped up with a series of 15-minute speed networking to connect entrepreneurs and mentors, followed by an informal dinner meetup at Good Nature Brewing.
The concluding event of the weekend was a customer discovery keynote on Sunday morning by repeat entrepreneur and product leader Giff Constable. He is the author of Talking to Humans, Testing with Humans, and Becoming Monday. He served as the chief product officer at Meetup, leading the product management, design, engineering, and data science functions.
Constable said that instead of a lecture, the keynote he envisioned was as a conversation. “We’re going to do a little show and tell on some customer discovery topics, and then ideally this gets into a really interesting conversation,” he said.
He said there are multiple techniques that successful entrepreneurs employ in their ventures, but all successes stem from one central characteristic.
“ … (Everything) starts with having a vision for how you’re going to make a dent in the world. How you’re going to make something better. Whatever that is for you, it starts with a vision. These techniques don’t help you; they don’t provide the vision for you. You have to have that vision. But, there’s a huge gap as you probably know, and a huge failure rate. Between having a vision of something important and actually bringing it to life. A lot of time, blood, sweat, and tears [are] in that gap,” Constable said.
One way to help mitigate that failure rate is through customer discovery, while being conscious not to cloud discovery efforts with confirmation bias. Constable warned that when some entrepreneurs go into a customer discovery interviews, they go in with the explicit goal of getting someone to commit something for their product, testing whether there is urgency for their product.
“That is a great experiment, but that is different from these interviews. These qualitative interviews where you’re trying to really understand their behavior, their emotions, their past, their experiences, and the like. And when you’re doing these interviews, if you go in with answers that you want to be true, you’re going to get yourself into trouble,” Constable said.
The next Grand Challenges panel discussion is: “The Big Five Imperatives in Sustainability: Opportunities for Local and Global Impact” at 10:30 a.m. on November 4 in Persson Auditorium. You can .