Generative AI is at the forefront of everyone’s minds, offering businesses the potential to revolutionize operations, enhance productivity, and gain competitive advantages. However, for many companies, especially small to mid-sized businesses, navigating the adoption of generative AI can be daunting. The question often arises: What’s the best approach to integrating these powerful tools into the organization?
In this article, we’ll explore two general generative AI adoption strategies—horizontal and vertical—delving into their benefits, challenges, real-world examples, and how they can be applied to drive success in your business.
Horizontal Generative AI Adoption: Broad Integration for Widespread Impact
The horizontal adoption strategy involves deploying generative AI tools across the entire organization. The goal is to equip your workforce with the tools they need to become more productive, efficient, and innovative in their daily tasks. This approach can democratize access to AI, allowing every department and individual to leverage its capabilities.
Horizontal Adoption Strategy Pros:
- Increased Productivity: By integrating AI tools like chatbots, automation software, or data analysis tools, employees can streamline repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on more strategic activities.
- Broad Familiarization: Horizontal adoption helps build a strong AI foundation across the organization. Employees become familiar with AI’s capabilities, making them more comfortable with exploring its potential.
- Scalability: Once AI tools are implemented across the board, they can be scaled and customized as needed, leading to more innovative applications as the workforce becomes adept at using them.
Horizontal Adoption Strategy Cons:
- Initial Learning Curve: Widespread adoption requires training and education, which can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
- Risk of Overwhelm: Employees might feel overwhelmed by the new tools, especially if the implementation is rushed or lacks sufficient support.
- Generalization Over Specialization: While horizontal adoption spreads AI usage, it might lack the depth needed for more specialized, high-impact applications.
Moderna’s Horizontal Generative AI Adoption
A notable example of horizontal adoption is Moderna’s approach to integrating generative AI across its workforce. By encouraging widespread use of AI tools, the company quickly saw significant engagement, resulting in the creation of over 750 custom GPT models within three months. Employees were trained on how to use AI tools, and as they became more comfortable, they began identifying opportunities to customize these tools for specific tasks and projects. This broad-based familiarity with AI not only enhanced productivity but also fostered innovation across the company. However, the key takeaway from Moderna’s experience is that while they achieved widespread AI usage, the true measure of success lies in the value generated from these implementations, not just in the number of AI models created.
Vertical Generative AI Adoption: Targeted Use Cases for Competitive Advantage
In contrast, the vertical adoption strategy focuses on applying generative AI to specific use cases within the organization. This approach seeks to drive competitive advantage by optimizing particular processes, products, or services.
Vertical Adoption Strategy Pros:
- High Impact: By zeroing in on specific applications, businesses can maximize the ROI from their AI investments. For example, optimizing supply chain management or enhancing customer personalization through AI can directly boost the bottom line.
- Expertise Development: Focusing on particular use cases allows teams to develop deep expertise in AI applications relevant to their industry, making them leaders in those areas.
- Clear Success Metrics: Vertical adoption typically allows for more straightforward measurement of success, as the goals and outcomes are tightly defined.
Vertical Adoption Strategy Cons:
- Limited Scope: Focusing on a few areas may mean other parts of the business are left behind, missing out on the broader benefits of AI.
- Dependence on Specialists: Vertical adoption often requires specialized knowledge, which may necessitate hiring or upskilling staff, leading to increased costs.
- Slower Integration: While this strategy can lead to significant breakthroughs in specific areas, it may take longer for the broader organization to feel the benefits of AI.
Which Generative AI Adoption Strategy Is Right for Your Business?
Choosing between horizontal and vertical generative AI adoption strategies depends on your business goals, resources, and current familiarity with AI technologies. For businesses looking to broadly enhance productivity and build a strong foundation in AI, horizontal adoption might be the way to go. On the other hand, if your focus is on driving innovation and gaining a competitive edge in specific areas, vertical adoption could be more appropriate.
Tailoring Your Generative AI Journey
Both horizontal and vertical strategies have their merits, and in many cases, a combination of both may be the optimal path forward. By starting with horizontal adoption, you can lay the groundwork for AI familiarity and productivity gains, then transition to vertical strategies that capitalize on your workforce’s newfound AI expertise.
If your organization is ready to explore generative AI adoption but needs guidance on the best approach, we’re here to help. Contact us to learn how we can support your AI journey and tailor a strategy that aligns with your business goals.
