AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages
Episode 56: AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages, with Kevin Maney
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AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages — Learn the pros and plot potential pitfalls. AI technology advantages and disadvantages revealed!
AI technology advantages and disadvantages — On this episode of Sell With Authority, I’m joined by guest expert Kevin Maney. Kevin is a bestselling author, an award-winning columnist, and has been writing about tech and category design for over three decades. I knew this would be an excellent opportunity to pick his brain and learn more about how to embrace AI.
His depth of expertise in category design, combined with his knowledge of emerging technologies such as AI, make him the perfect guest for today’s conversation.
We’ll discuss how embracing AI can help lower costs, improve team capacity, and increase project quality and business development. But more than that, we’ll explore how embracing AI can help businesses design and dominate a new category, strengthen their niche, and differentiate themselves from the competition.
This conversation with Kevin is sure to provide valuable insights and context for anyone looking to step away from the sea of sameness and establish themselves as true authorities in their industry.
What you will learn in this episode is about AI technology advantages and disadvantages:
- Adopting AI will help lower costs and increase project quality and business development, exploring the practical aspects of AI technology’s advantages and disadvantages.
- Why emerging tech provides valuable insights into how advancements will impact industries in the short and long term
- Kevin’s definition and insights on category design
- The formula for identifying new categories in changing contexts
- Why AI is key for designing and dominating a new category
- The foundational work Kevin credits for influencing him
Resources:
- Website: https://www.categorydesignadvisors.com/
- Don’t miss out on our insightful conversation with Sharon Toerek about AI technology advantages and disadvantages: AI and Intellectual Property Rights
- Learn more about AI technology advantages and disadvantages by tuning in to this podcast: Being Different Matters: Talking the Future of AI with Author Kevin Maney
- LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmaney/
- LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/categorydesign/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kmaney
- Play Bigger Book: https://www.categorydesignadvisors.com/play-bigger/
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: Full Episode Transcript
Welcome to the Sell with Authority podcast. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI, and my team and I created this podcast specifically for you. So if you’re an agency owner or business coach or a strategic consultant, and you’re looking to fill your sales pipeline with a steady stream of right-fit prospects and get the at-bats, the leads in front of the right fit prospects in order to build and scale, then you’re in the right place. Do you want proven strategies for becoming the known expert in your niche and attracting all the clients you need? Yep. We’re going to cover that. You want to learn how to step away from the sea of sameness so you actually stand out from your competitors and own the ground you’re standing on. Yeah, we’re going to cover that too. Do you want to future-proof your business so you can successfully navigate the next challenge that comes your way?
Well, I absolutely will help you there as well. I promise you each episode of this podcast will contain valuable insights, tangible examples, and best practices, never theory, from thought leaders, experts, and owners who have done exactly what you’re working hard to do. So, I want you to think practical and tactical and never be fluff. Each of our guests has built a position of authority and then monetized that position by growing their audience, nurturing leads, and, yes, converting sales. But all the while, they did it by being helpful. So every time someone from their audience turned around there, they were with a helpful answer to an important question. So their RightFit prospects never ever were made to feel like a prospect. I also promise you every strategy that we discuss and every tool we recommend will be shared in full transparency in each episode so you can become the known expert in your niche and fill your sales pipeline with a steady stream of RightFit clients who never, ever were made to feel like one of your prospects.
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: Kevin Maney’s Introduction
So, I am beyond excited. Should I say, over the moon? Maybe that’s pretty accurate. I am super excited for you to meet our very special guest expert today, Kevin Maney. So, if you’re meeting Kevin for the first time, he’s the co-author of the book play Bigger and has been a bestselling author and award-winning columnist, writing about tech and category design for over three decades. So, when Kevin accepted my invitation to join me here, to say that I was elated is a bit of an understatement. And here’s, here’s why. So, in addition to Kevin’s depth of expertise around category design, he blends that with a depth of knowledge in AI and other emerging tech, and more specifically, how all of the tech advancements that we read about daily, like all of that stuff, how it will actually impact our industry in the short term and in the long term.
So, when Kevin said yes to this interview, I knew this would be an excellent opportunity to pick his brain and learn more about how to embrace AI and what it can do to lower costs. Yes, of course, improve the capacity of our teams yep. The list goes on to potentially increase the quality of a project with additional research capabilities or maybe even accelerate biz dev. But could embracing AI also help you and your team design a new category? Could embracing AI help you strengthen your niche or perhaps even go more and more narrow? I promise you this conversation with Kevin, we’ll give you the insights and context you need to step away from the sea of sameness and finally own the ground you’re standing on. Now is the time to double down everyone. So, without further ado, welcome to the Sell with Authority podcast, Kevin.
And thanks for that awesome interruption, Stephen. I appreciate it.
You are very welcome and well deserved. I’m super excited about this conversation, as you can tell, in the green room, everybody. When Kevin dialed in, I said, holy bananas is Kevin, it’s Kevin. And my enthusiasm, I think my unbridled enthusiasm, was a bit over the top. But I’m excited. I’m excited about this conversation. So before we dive in, Kevin, take us behind the curtain And share more about your path and journey. Share a little bit more context there, And then we’ll dive in with the questions.
Yeah. Well, I was a journalist, as you referred to me, for a long time. I’ve written about technology in this tech industry since basically I got out of college. So it’s been I’ve seen everything since the early days of the personal computer revolution through the web, AI, and everything in between. And I’ve written about it for USA Today, Newsweek, Fortune, wired everybody you could name. I also started writing books and have written nine books now. And so, one of the, I guess, two, two kinds of parallel things that tell you that are relevant to what your introduction was about. In 2016, I co-authored a book called Play Vigor with three Silicon Valley veterans.
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: Creating and Shaping New Markets
It was about this idea of category design and how we basically invented the phrase and the concept and how to do it. and then this book became the most significant selling book that I’ve ever been a part of turned into the consulting business because it was a kind of book where CEOs and venture capitalists and others were reading it and saying, please help us do what you wrote about in the meantime because I thought that I was an author and journalist, not a consultant. By the time the book came out, I was already on to the next book. And that book was the start of a relationship with Mont Tania, who’s the CEO of General Catalyst, one of the biggest VC firms in Silicon Valley.
And we’ve now written three books together. We’re working on our fourth, and my exposure to Hemant has been; we first did a book called Unscaled, which was about how AI and all these technologies we’re inventing right now, like blockchains and 3D printing and all that are going to change all sorts of different industries. And that moved on to one called UN Healthcare, which was specifically about how all those technologies are changing healthcare. Another one is called intended Consequences, which got into the idea of responsible innovation around AI. Now, this fourth one is more philosophical about his investment thesis. So, my exposure to Haymot is one of the ways that I’ve had a very deep look into what’s going on in the industry around all these new technologies and how they are changing things. So, combining that with the concept of category design has been a really interesting journey for me.
Yeah, no, no, no doubt. So, thank you for that context and the great foundational context. Let’s go to a high level and think of category design, and then we’ll put these two together with category design and AI here in just a minute. But, so let’s go with a high-level category design. How do you? Because that might be a new term; in fact, let’s get an updated total here because it’s an impressive total. The last total that I saw with respect to the number of copies that play Bigger or sold was about a hundred thousand, and it’s probably more than that.
It’s probably double that now. Yeah, probably double that now.
Oh, amazing. Absolutely amazing. Okay. So, how do you define category design?
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: The Power of Category Design
What are the advantages and disadvantages of AI technology? So, category design is kind of an outside-in way of thinking. You know, you, you started in your introduction, you got, you talked about things about standing out, and from your competition and all that. Let me work back a second and say that one of the core concepts that led to this was just this basic idea in most categories. It’s always been true, but it’s been completely very much accelerated when you’re talking about digital categories. Okay. It became obvious when you look at them that one category winner takes away almost all the economics of that category. Hmm. And you get a bunch of follow-ons or smaller players that are increasingly diminishing market share. I mean, you think of something like Uber or rideshare. One, Uber has this enormous market share, Lyft about maybe 25%, and others you can barely name.
And it’s like that in market after market. And so we started with a concept of, well, if that’s actually true, then. We leaned on some foundational work about using data to study categories by economists like Paul Roski and others. We realized that if you are entering a category where there’s already a defined winner, the best you can hope for is to scrape some market share away from them. Hmm. And that’s a hard business to be in, and that’s constantly trying to make an argument that you got you’re 10% faster or 10% cheaper or something like that. So, if you are a company leader, why would you not want to do everything you could to increase the odds that you are going to be a category winner, whether it’s to get out of a category you’re like stuck in or start a new category or, or whatever.
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? So basically, the starting idea is that you’re in a better position. If you are in a category, you can win. And, so then we started to regen re reverse engineer that of like, well, what if that’s true? Then what would you do to increase your chances of being in that position? And, so we came up with this concept of category design, the idea of first finding, figuring out what the missing is in the world, what’s the problem that’s not being solved, or the whole problem that can be solved in some new way because the context is changing around it. And once you understand that there’s a missing thing out there in the world that needs to be addressed, how do you then define that problem in a way that makes your company and everybody else understand that that problem exists?
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: How to Set the Rules in Your Industry
And define the solution in a way that you’re setting the rules for the category. So everybody else has to follow you, giving you an increased chance of winning that category over time. I brought up the example of Uber, for instance. If there’s an interesting way to look at that, if you look at any ride-sharing app anywhere in the world, it looks like Uber’s app. It’s because Uber designed the category and won the dominant design of the category. So everybody else has to look like them, or they or the people don’t know what to do with it. Yep. And if you set the rules and make everybody else like you, then you automatically have an advantage. And so that’s what we try to tell people as a way to think about your strategy and your business. It’s what, as advisors, we help companies try to do, and you know, of course, nobody can guarantee there’s a lot of execution involved that makes that happen. But at least starting that way with the strategy and the way of thinking is an immediate leg up.
This, this, this is, this is brilliant. I know that you don’t need me to edify the brilliance of the statement, but here’s what I added into, well, I added a bunch of things into my notes, but when you said setting the rules so everyone else follows you, I think that that is, is such an aha. And some might say, oh, well, yeah, I guess that makes sense. But there’s a lot of strategy involved. Then, the examples that you shared and the use cases that you shared totally back that up. But it’s such a great opportunity. So instead of thinking, well, yeah, but you know, my agency’s not Uber. Yes. And so we’ll get to this, like how you can still apply this strategy of setting the rules so everyone else follows. You’re super bright, Kevin. I really love that.
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? You know, part of that, too, is recognizing that if you are in someone else’s category and they’ve already set the rules, you’re probably a better business strategy. I mean, look, lemme back when one thing is to say, there are thousands and thousands of businesses that are in someone else’s strategy and just are, are happy to grab 3% of market share. And it’s a sure. Perfectly good businesses and many of them do very well for a long time or sell somebody else for good, all good. I’m not saying that every business has to do this; every business can’t be a category leader, but if you’re an ambitious business leader, then you’re stuck in a category somebody else already won; your better strategy is to try to get out of that, create your own niche that makes you stand apart, makes you look like you’re different, not make constantly making this argument for better.
So how are you part of the process? How do you discover that category? How do you then set the rules for all of that if you are? And, by the way, there are also plenty of categories that exist where there is a whole lot of comp where the category winner is not yet defined. Hmm. And you can see those because, like, think for a second of what happened in with smartphones. I’m sorry, but I boil all over here a little bit. If you think back, in the early days of smartphones, there were all these different models, right? There were Blackberries, Nokia’s Motorola, and all these different operating systems. Every phone worked somewhat differently. And this happened over quite a decade. So, it was clear that everybody knew that someday there was going to be this device in our pockets that was like a smartphone, a computer in our pocket.
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: Starting with Why in a Crowded Market
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? But there were all these different versions of it. When there are all these different versions of it, most consumers stay on the sidelines. You get a lot of early adopters going, but the mass market is still watching and waiting for it something to happen. What they’re waiting for to happen is for what is called the dominant design to emerge. The dominant design emerged in smartphones when Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007. And everybody basically said that’s what a smartphone should be. Hmm. And all those other things, all those other designs disappeared. Now, you can buy a smartphone from any manufacturer, and it looks exactly like an iPhone. It works basically like an iPhone. Right? This is a pattern that repeats itself in pretty much every category that happens. So part of the point of that story is it is possible that you’re in a category that’s still a big mess, like the early, small pro-market, and you can come in and create that dominant design and win the category, but you have to know where you are in time. You have to know that you’re in that space where the category does not yet have a dominant design. If the dominant design already exists, you’re in a category where somebody has already won, and you better get out. That’s the point.
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? Okay. So, let’s take that and tie it into our audience here, which are agency owners, business coaches, and strategic consultants. And because I will tell you my predictive team and I either teach workshops or attend workshops. I mean, we’re, we’re, we’re often, in groups of other agencies and that kind of stuff. There are also opportunities for the agencies to introduce themselves to the group. And we often hear things like I’m so-and-so. We’re a full-service integrated marketing advertising PR firm, which sounds very generalistic from a service perspex perspective. And then looking for like the niche piece, like, like you just said, so like all of that, what I just described is obviously a very crowded from a service perspective, but then the, the missed opportunity, again, I’m basing this question because our point of view is, okay, get that from a service perspective, but then can you take the delivery of that into a niche, like specialize in an audience or a superpower or a business issue? How do you apply those strengths to that? Because then that creates the niche. But what would your advice be as far as how an agency or coach consultancy can apply this category design methodology when their services from a service perspective might seem generalistic?
AI technology advantages and disadvantages — Well, so your description is like, And this is what 99% of businesses do, is they start by telling you what they are. Right? Yep. But what really matters is why you need to exist. Yep. And so if you’re an agency, for instance, and you want to stand out and find a niche that makes you feel somewhat different, don’t start with, like, here’s what we are and what we do. Start with why the world needs us. Try to identify, if you start by identifying the problem, the unsolved problem that you are in a position to solve. And describe that first, you’ve got people’s attention in a way that you’ll never get their attention if you start with, well, we’re a full-service agency, blah, blah, blah. Yep. And so the trick is, it is finding that, finding that why that is unique to you, and then beginning every conversation with that why. And then, and then moving on to once you have somebody’s interest about, oh yeah, you know what, I have that problem, and I don’t know of anybody who actually has a solution for me. Now I’ve got you, you’ve got my attention. Tell me how you solved that problem, who your people are, or why you’re special. But the first thing you need to do is get to that.
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: The Power of Starting with Why
Yeah. I love that because that, that’s what then creates somebody, as you just described it, somebody on the other end of that, assuming that they’re going to have that unsolved issue then is going to, to lean in, right? That’s their pain point. That’s what they may have been trying to solve for X period of time. And if you potentially represent a solution to that, that’s what they’re going to lean into with a conversation, and that gives you the at-bat, as opposed to taking yourself out of the game by sounding like everyone else. You may solve the problem, but you never get a chance to tell the story. Right?
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. When we worked with clients who were out of this whole bigger thing, we started a firm called Category Design Advisors. We actually work with companies, and Yeah. And the core, the most important deliverable we do is this 800-word narrative story that we call POV.
Okay.
And if it’s 800 words, the first 300 words are about the problem that exists in the world that’s not being solved by anybody and describing it in a way that makes the audience you’re addressing feel like, oh, oh my God, that they’re right like this, even though I didn’t even think about this problem before. But yeah. You know, when you put it that way. Yeah. That sucks. And then the, the, and the next 300 words aren’t about the company at all. It’s about, like, if that problem exists in the world, then what should a solution look like? Whether this company or any company does it. Because that’s how you define a category. Rather than saying, here’s my product, defining a category is defining the problem and what the solution should look like universally.
And if you do that, then you’ve got your audience clicked in and saying, oh, this person’s not trying to sell me something. This person is trying to help me. And then at the end, those last 150 words or whatever can get into, and here’s our company and why we’re particularly positioned to be the ones to create this solution and solve this problem. And when you get, And that, that kind of storytelling is extremely, it’s, and it’s not a, don’t even think of that as messaging. That’s a strategy. that kind of storytelling is the heart and soul of a strategy, the story a company needs to tell itself, or an agency needs to tell itself about what it does, and then that manifests itself in the way that it talks to the world about what it does. Yeah. That’s, And it’s, And honestly, it’s, it’s the complete reverse of the way most agencies, companies, or whatever approach the world, they start out with, here’s who we are and what we do. And here’s the solution we offer. Oh, and here’s what it does. Here’s why you should care. And the last thing, by that point, you’ve lost them.
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: Infusing Your Business with Purpose
Okay. I I love this because you’re going 180 degrees from the norm, which is fantastic. So then, I also love the recipe you broke down, like how the 800 words get knitted together in the three different sections. That’s great. So then let’s say that somebody does that, and let’s say an agency owner does that. What would your advice be then? I think I know how you’re going to answer this, but I wanna, but I want to hear this in your words. So then, how do they take the POV and blend that into their thought leadership? Let’s say they write a blog or a video series, or maybe they write books, or however they’re sharing their thought leadership annual research, maybe they have a podcast. How would you incorporate that? They blend that into everything that they are putting out into the world to be helpful.
The POV becomes like the wellspring of everything the company does. Because if you think about it, like, I mean, like, what is, what are, what are, what are, what are the most enduring organizations that ever existed in the history of the world? They’re religions. And religions exist because they have a story they tell themselves about what they’re about. And why they exist in the world. you know, and Christianity, it’s the Bible, and it’s, And, the Quran and Islam, whatever. But, so that POV becomes essentially like that story, a company tells itself about who it is, why it exists in the world, and why it matters. And if you have that story, then it informs the kind of, I mean, if you’re at a company that builds products, it informs the kind of product that you build.
It informs you of the kind of marketing that you use. It informs the slot thought leadership you might put out. And everything that the company does should be the heart and soul of the company’s culture. So it’s not about actually. And by the way, do you know what? You write these things down like this, and everybody buys in, and you start to get words and phrases that work. For instance, when we’re writing a POV, and we describe a problem, we try to give a label of the problem, like two or three words that label the problem. So it gets a name. And so when you do things like that, you have these little words and phrases that can become part of the way you talk and the way you express yourself as an agency or as a business. so it’s not about actually taking that POV and literally slapping it on the website or taking this paragraph out and putting it in a thought leadership message. It’s about becoming the soul of who you are. Once that is in place, it helps inform everything you’re going to do in every way.
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: How AI Can Transform Your Agency’s Future
What are the advantages and disadvantages of AI technology? I love this. I hear myself saying, I love this Kevin, I love this Kevin, I love this Kevin, because of all of these points, And the fact that you put this into how you said the POV becomes a wellspring of everything you do. And then you mentioned the religion piece, and I thought, okay, of the 31 parables that Jesus taught, he never, ever in the gospels walks up to a crowd and says, Hey, everybody, I’m Jesus and Nazareth. Maybe you heard that I did that sermon on the mount, fed the 5,000, did the same thing, and then did the right. The person had leprosy, got rid of that, got a message for you.
Right?
Right. Jesus never led with the resume. Right. Instead, he would walk into a crowd and say, so there’s this Pharisee and a tax collector, and then, and then everyone’s around like, wait a minute, what? These couldn’t be two polar opposites in the social context of the time. And then everybody did, like what you talked about, and leaned in. Wait a minute. Pharisee and a tax collector, those two would never be together. Right? Right. And now they’re ready to hear the story. Right? Yep.
That’s right. That’s great. I like that.
Wow. This, this is, this is amazing. Okay. So, thank you for taking and slicing apart the category design. Put it into the context for agencies, coaches, consultants, and our audience here. Let’s go into the AI piece. Okay. And so what opportunities do you see that agencies should be looking at to run toward AI as opposed to thinking, well, I need to build a defensible moat here because this AI thing is going to destroy my business. So, let’s go to the high level first and get your perspective on AI, and then we’ll take it into category design. Okay.
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? Let me start by saying that one of the benefits of being around and being a part of the tech industry is that I have a historical perspective. Hmm. And so, the very first book I wrote was a book called Mega Media Shakeout. Don’t look it up because it is a terrible book when I look back on it.
That’s a great way to sell copies, sir Kevin.
So, I was in the early nineties, and I’d been a reporter for USA Today or technology columns for USA Today. And I started talking to people and getting on this. I mean, it blew my mind, this whole idea that that content was going to go digital. Mm. And all the ramifications that I remember, I started with a conversation with John Scully, who was at Apple at the time. And then I started writing about it, and then it turned into a book that came out in April 1995.
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: How to Navigate the AI Era
And it was literally the first book that came out that was about, like, oh my God, content’s, all this content’s going to go digital. What would that mean for different kinds of companies and whatever? That year was when the consumer internet took off and basically all of a sudden exploded, right? Be Netscape and all these other companies. And there was this panic among businesses: What is this internet thing? What’s it going to mean? Is it going to put us out of business? Whatever. And I was like a rookie author; I had never spoken in front of people before in my life. All of a sudden, I was getting dragged into corporate boardrooms and in front of 5,000 people at conferences because everybody was in a panic over what this meant.
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? What’s this thing going to do to me? What’s happening right now with AI? Looks like that moment. Hmm. What’s interesting about that is that it was the kickoff of the.com era from the middle nineties to 2000. Yep. Which had this explosion of innovation, much of which was too early or not right, and much of which crashed and burned. Yes. And then, and then in the early two thousand, which is when Google was formed, And Facebook and all these others, these, these new versions of taking advantage of that internet tech, technology, that foundational technology started to emerge. It became very real and affected all of our lives. I would make a bet that we’re in 1995 of the AI era, so we’re going to. Maybe it’s a little sped up because everything else, everything’s speeds up now, but I think there’s going to be three or four years here of everybody being in this panic about, what’s this a chatGPT, and everything is about; there’s going to be a lot of stuff experimentation that’s not going to be correct. And there’s going to be this crash-and-burn moment, and then the real stuff is going to emerge. What I would say to everybody right now is to experiment with this stuff. Don’t panic; try to figure it out. Know that it’s going to be around for the long term, but that what it looks like today and what you think it’s going to be is probably nothing like what it’s eventually going to be.
It sounds like great advice based on some observation of having seen this thing happen before.
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? Yeah, it’s obviously still emerging. And to pull this into the category design realm for a second, okay? Since the book came out, working with companies, I’ve come to use a formula that actually helps a lot of people think about where new categories lie. Okay. So, the formula is very simple: context. Okay. Plus missing, plus innovation equals a new category.
Okay. So hang on just a second. Context plus missing and then plus innovation. Equals a new category.
Perfect. Thank you.
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: Seizing Opportunities in Times of Change
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? So, let’s start with context. It’s all about what’s going on in the world and what’s changing. The greater the changes in the context, the more new problems that need to be solved arise, or the more old issues can be solved in new ways. Okay. So basically, the more the context changes, the more opportunities there are, and new categories exist to be born. And if you think about this, where we sit right now at this moment in time, we just had a pandemic that changed enormously, changed the context of the way people work, the way things, and the way supply chains work. It’s disrupted a whole lot of the old world. We have a war in Europe that’s that’s changing geopolitical norms and all over the world. And we have this AI thing that’s suddenly emerged and is just disrupting everybody’s way of thinking about all this.
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? Not only there’s ai, but there’s also sitting around the sidelines there are, are there’s still blockchain technology and 3D printing and CRISPR genomics and all of these things that we’ve invented recently that are game-changing foundational technologies. So right now, there’s this enormous change in context. First of all, that means that there are enormous opportunities for new things and new categories. So then you take the second piece, which is missing, which is now, okay, we understand there’s this enormous change in context. Because what we’re good at as an agency or as a business person, entrepreneur, whatever. What is a new missing? This that exists, a new problem to be solved, a new way to solve an old one, exists because of this change in context pertinent to who I am.
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? And if you can spot that and realize that there’s this, this, this missing thing in the world, then the next step is to create an innovation that addresses that missing thing. If I do all of those three things, then what I’ve essentially done is create a new category, a new market category of a product or service that didn’t exist before. So you put all that together, and you’d have to say that if you’re listening to this right now, instead of panicking, go out and understand that change in context and look for what’s missing that you can address. And once you see that missing, figure out the innovation you can create that addresses it, and you’re going to be in a really good position rather than sitting there and thinking like, I don’t know what to do. Or, I’m worried this is going to put me out of business.
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: From Idea to Strategic Storytelling
Wow. Okay. My note-taking is trying to catch up with what you were sharing there. Okay. First, the formula. I want to go back through it one more time to make sure I got it correct in my notes. So context plus missing plus innovation equals a new category.
Okay. And then I think I heard you say that the question that we ought to be asking ourselves as agency owners, business coaches, and strategic consultants is, can I create an innovation that addresses the missing,
Right?
Yes. If I can do that, and then further, you said, instead of panicking, go understand the context, understand what is missing, and then address that through innovation. And if you can do that successfully, you may have created a new category.
Yes. Oh, that’s awesome.
In our conversations with companies and clients, we have found that this is a great conversation starter for how you start to see where to go, especially in an era when the context is changing greatly and there’s concern about where to go from here.
What are AI technology’s advantages and disadvantages? Okay. So let’s see if we can take this. Let me make sure that I understand how to proceed. Let me say it that way: Okay. So now we have the formula context plus missing, plus innovation equals new category. Let’s say that someone listening to you right now sorts that out, and they’re like, aha, I think I have an idea for a new category. Then, would your next step be, alright, you ought to sit down and write an 800-word POV, with around 300 words around the problem and 500 words around what a solution should look like? And then maybe a hundred, 150 words around, okay, so this is our company and how we solve the problem. Would the next step then be to do that strategic storytelling you talked about with the 800-word POV?
AI technology advantages and disadvantages? Yes. The reason is not just because of what you’re going to write but because that process of having to write that thing forces you to think very clearly about what the problem is to be solved. What that missing is very clearly about what a solution should look like in the world, and very clearly about why you are the one that can create that solution because it’s long enough to be a story. Still, it’s short enough to be a forcing function to force you to think clearly you don’t, And by writing it down, you’re actually capturing that clarity rather than just having talking points or bullet points on a slide that you’re trying to address or whatever. So I would very much advise going through that exercise as a team. If you’ve got a team of people that you trust, rather than just being one person, the agency founder or CEO, sitting down and saying, I’m going to do this by myself. It’s best as a team effort.
AI Technology Advantages And Disadvantages: A Guide to Strategic Innovation
Yeah, it feels a little bit like a strategic crucible. You have to pass the li test. It forces you to take the hyperbole and entrepreneurial enthusiasm out of it, right? It forces you to get down to the brass tax to determine how relevant this is. It forces you to think strategically about the problem that needs to be solved.
Yes, exactly. Yes. Wow.
Okay. Holy bananas, this was awesome. I know we need to come in for a landing and that we’re quickly running out of time. I am so grateful for your smarts and your generous sharing of your smarts. Before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, do you have any two things, any final advice, or anything you think we might have missed that you’d like to share? And then please tell our audience the best way to connect with you, Kevin.
Yeah. I would say that we are grateful for the foundational work that others have done before us that helped us understand this. So, I mean, our book Play Bigger is a tremendous resource. The book that I wrote with Mont, called Un Scaled, really gets broadly into the impact of AI in a bunch of different industries. But, as I mentioned, I would also advise this economist named Paul Roski, G-E-R-O-S-K-I, who wrote a book called The Evolution of New Markets, which I believe every entrepreneur, company, founder, whatever should read. There’s one other book that I would recommend that influenced me a lot, which is a book by Stephen Johnson called Where Good Ideas Come From, which was a study of why certain inventions and innovations took off and changed the world at that particular moment in time. So all of those, if you want a reading list for this podcast, are the ones I would put on it.
Brilliant. That is the best way to connect with you, Kevin.
The firm is called Category Design Advisors. The website is categorydesignadvisors.com. All our contact information and other thought leadership and thinking background information are there. Yeah, all that. So it’s also a good resource.
Okay. Everyone, no matter how many notes you took, no. How often do you go back and re-listen to Kevin’s words of wisdom? I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take what he so generously shared with you, take it, and apply it. ’cause when you do, not only will you accelerate your results and follow the formula, but perhaps you’ll create a brand new category. And Kevin, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And again, I’m grateful that you said yes to come onto the show, to be our mentor, our guide, to help us move our businesses onward to that next level, to you so much, my friend.
You’re welcome, Stephen. It was a blast. Glad to do it.
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