Reflections on the Data+AI summit June 12/13, 2024

The Data+AI summit organized by Databricks in San Francisco yielded very valuable insights that supplement our learnings from work with more than 15 pharma and biotech organizations. Key themes that I took away:

1. Generative AI has confirmed potential, delivers value and can be a game changer for the right use case
Meet users where they are with regards to data utilization and query. Organize the support and developer teams to drive consistency and build capabilities, while ensuring accountability by the business. Identify no more than 5 KPIs and hold the organization accountable.

2. Effective implementation requires change management
Generative ai is rapidly becoming more about change management than the pure technology. To help people come onboard, reflect on learning paths, capability development (no, people do not want to become prompt engineers) and reinforcement by the culture.

3. Selecting the relevant use cases is key for success
Selecting the most appropriate use cases is critical to deliver results, build credibility and build capabilities. Phasing the prioritized use cases opens the door to experiential learning and incremental efficiencies and growth first. They build credibility and then allow to tackle more transformative projects. Organizations who aim high and far, then identify baby steps and put on the training wheels are more likely to advance rapidly. The fancy showcase projects may sound tempting, but we see these inevitably run into delays and adoption challenges.