AI can be a powerful tool for innovation, helping with everything from understanding data to generating and testing ideas. But innovation rarely happens in isolation.
Innovation occurs at intersections where new technologies meet evolving strategies, where customer needs collide with creative thinking and increasingly where AI meets digital strategy.
AI is not just a tool. AI is becoming the connective tissue that binds together the components of a solid digital strategy. Organizations that understand how to integrate AI with their broader digital ambitions are the ones not just surviving change, but shaping it.
Why Intersection Matters
A digital strategy outlines how a company utilizes technology to achieve its business objectives. It includes customer engagement platforms, data infrastructure, digital products and operational processes. AI, on the other hand, amplifies that strategy by making it adaptive, predictive and scalable.
The real magic happens when AI is not simply layered on top of a digital strategy but fundamentally embedded within it. This fusion enables companies to:
- Spot opportunities earlier through predictive analytics.
- Automate complex tasks to free up human creativity.
- Personalize at scale in ways humans alone cannot.
- Experiment faster without prohibitive costs.
Think of it as shifting from having a GPS (digital strategy) to having a GPS that learns your driving habits, predicts traffic patterns and suggests better routes before you even ask (AI).
Examples At The Crossroads
As Kate Gibson writes for the Harvard Business School, “AI-driven strategies don’t merely improve existing practices; they fundamentally transform them. With AI, you can adopt predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs, automate processes to reduce costs and personalize services to enhance customer satisfaction.”
Anticipating customer needs, reducing costs and improving customer satisfaction are underlying goals of just about every business strategy — digital and offline. However, AI can radically transform how a company goes about achieving these goals.
Examples include:
- Microsoft and GitHub Copilot: GitHub’s Copilot, powered by OpenAI’s models, is more than a developer’s assistant. GitHub is a case study in how AI becomes part of a company’s digital DNA. Microsoft did not just launch AI as a side project. Microsoft has worked to integrate AI directly into platforms that users and developers already leverage daily. This not only boosts productivity but also fosters innovation as developers can explore and prototype faster.
- Stitch Fix: This online personal styling company uses AI to match clothing items to customers’ style and fit preferences. Its digital strategy focuses on blending data science with human stylists. AI drives the personalization engine, while the digital platform ensures seamless customer engagement. The result is an agile business model that evolves with consumer trends in near real-time.
- Moderna: Long before COVID-19, Moderna had a digital-first strategy built on a cloud-based research platform. When the pandemic hit, AI accelerated vaccine design and testing cycles. Their integration of AI into every phase of R&D shortened innovation timelines from years to months.
The Importance Of Leadership
Achieving buy-in for digital strategy and AI starts at the top. For many organizations, this remains the greatest challenge. Research from McKinsey reveals that employees are actually three times more likely to be using generative AI than leaders expect. This often results in companies not making sufficient investments to provide formal training for AI tools or to integrate AI into existing workflows.
As Prof. Marc K. Peter, author, professor and academic director of the AI program at Rochester-Bern Executive Programs, writes in his book, “with increased digitalization, the way we work and the skills we need are changing. Modern working environments motivate employees, strengthen positive corporate values and help promote digital skills. This requires agility, new management methods and working environments, communication technologies and collaboration platforms. The internal digital transformation leads to a successful organization. Managers are expected to distinguish themselves through innovative thinking, agile leadership and the ability to inspire their staff to digital transformation and thus create a corporate culture that welcomes and supports the transformation.”
How leadership chooses to implement AI solutions and respond to the changes brought about by AI ultimately sets the tone for the rest of the organization. Those who take a proactive approach empower employees to begin working in more efficient and innovative ways.
Action Steps To Implement AI In Your Digital Strategy
A proactive, thoughtful approach is needed to ensure your digital strategy and AI work in sync.
Where to start?
- For Individuals: Become bilingual. You do not need to code, but you must learn the language of data and AI. Understand the core concepts. Experiment with AI tools to grasp their potential intuitively. Stay curious, build skills and follow emerging trends and case studies in your industry.
- For Teams: Foster radical cross-functional collaboration. Create pilot squads with members from IT, data science, marketing and operations, focused on solving a single, high-impact business problem. Break down the silos, physically and culturally. Share learnings and create internal forums for AI experimentation and discussion.
- For Organizations:
- Audit your digital foundation. Before you invest millions in AI, assess the quality and accessibility of your data. A strong digital strategy is the prerequisite for any meaningful AI success.
- Lead with the business problem. Do not start with “We need an AI strategy.” Start with “Where is the biggest friction for our customers?” or “What is our most inefficient internal process?” Pull AI in as the solution. Turn these findings into use cases for AI within the digital strategy.
- Invest in “translator” talent. Hire and cultivate leaders who can bridge the gap between the technical and the strategic. They are your most valuable innovation assets.
- Partner strategically. Collaborate with AI vendors, startups and universities to stay ahead.
- Establish an AI governance and ethics framework. Do not wait for a crisis. Address ethics, bias and compliance early. Build your ethical guardrails from day one.
- Track results and refine. Clear metrics will help you determine how your AI tools are contributing to your digital strategy. Go beyond number-based KPIs to allow your team to report on process changes or other innovations they have achieved. Combining quantitative results with qualitative information will give you the full picture so you and your team can refine your use of AI within your digital strategy.
Bring Together AI And Digital Strategy
The fusion of AI and digital strategy is the functioning reality for the next generation of industry leaders. These initiatives can be jointly managed and offer powerful potential for innovation and improvement.
Companies that treat AI as an integral part of their digital roadmap will move faster, adapt quicker and create more enduring value.
Forbes
