IBM is focusing its AI initiatives on the business case instead of trying to get customers to focus on AI, and that’s what sets it apart. Who’s the leader in AI? If you ask Wall Street or the media, the answer you almost always get is either Nvidia or OpenAI. Google and Microsoft also get some mentions. But for the most part, those four vendors seem to garner all the good AI ink. By Tom Nolle.
The first reason is simple. IBM believes its buyers are smart, and it wants them to be. Most vendors don’t. For decades, I’ve listened to sales management tell the sales force to avoid consultative selling, avoid “educating” the customer. Make your darn numbers, sales management says. For decades (six, in fact) IBM has taken another path. They used to hand out notebooks to people, emblazoned with one word: Think. I’ve sat in on CIO/CTO-level meetings that included IBM’s account teams, and I was struck by how much the team worked to draw out that thinking. And not just thinking about technology, thinking about how technology changes business.
That brings the second point, which is that IBM has focused its AI on the business case instead of trying to get customers to focus on AI. Why isn’t writing a check good enough? It’s because a notion that AI might be valuable could fund an experiment, but not a significant deployment. AI is entertainment to most people, nothing more.
IBM has seen AI, its watsonx, as a business intelligence and analytics tool. They didn’t come on that as a stunning revelation in a recent sales call, they knew it because they were there thinking too. They’ve focused their AI discussions with enterprises—the same ones who’ve then told me about this—and they’re finding the real applications of AI, even what’s now called “generative” AI. Find more thoughts provoking ideas by following the link to the full article. Interesting read!
[Read More]