According to Michael Schrage (HBR August 01), the single most important algorithmic distinction between “born digital” enterprises and legacy companies is not their people, data sets or computational resources: it’s a clear real-time commitment to delivering accurate and actionable customer recommendations. Recommendation engines (or recommenders) force organisations to fundamentally rethink how to get greater value from their data while also creating greater value for their customers. In other words, recommendation engines are a terrific medium and mechanism for transitioning traditional managements to platform perspectives.

This is why we developed InnoSurvey™, the most comprehensive Innovation Analytic Tool on the market, which uses deep learning and data from more than 1,000 companies in 62 countries.

It synthesises the last 100 yeas of current thinking on innovation (from Schumpeter, Drucker and ahead) and looks at how a company should operate to gain innovation and growth – the insights from all our assignments are carried out by our community of consultants, which are licensed in more than 20 countries. The good news is that our recommendations (and analysis insights) are getting better and better every day, as our deep learning systems getting smarter and smarter. This provides our ecosystem with improved tools for generating faster, cheaper and enhanced recommendations to be implemented in the client’s operations.

However, and this is also why Mr Schrage’s article is a very important piece of work, transforming into an organisation that uses digital technology and artificial intelligence requires a totally new mind set. We often get the questions (from consultants or internal consultants):

1. What if the recommendations are better than the advice that we deliver today?
2. What if the assessment and measurement with InnoSurvey™ shows that we did a bad job for our clients?

My answer is that, if you do not do it, someone else will do it and you will lose your clients at the end of the day. The best consultants will not be youngsters with a “skateboard”, it will be experienced and well-educated consultants using the best digital tools, spending more time with their clients and less time behind the desk doing admin.

Also read our new paper on AI for business leaders here (where we share more about AI and Recommendations, but from a more technical level)