Whenever a new technology comes along, large companies think you need to appoint a designated senior leader — a “czar,” in popular parlance — and it will get taken care of. This, however, is a mistake. The process usually starts when teams are pitching leadership on wildly optimistic and conflicting use cases, and the board, excited but unsure how to proceed, puts some poor, unsuspecting soul in charge of the whole thing. It very rarely works out. Instead of a centralized top-down structure, AI implementation is owned by teams close to the work, which can mean a broad set of stakeholders providing real-time feedback. The piece details how Verizon has tried to implement this approach of letting innovation happen at the frontlines and supporting it at the core.
