AI leadership starts in the boardroom: Accenture

Scaling AI in a business requires leadership from the boardroom, according to Accenture’s head of applied intelligence, Raphael James.

For leaders in AI adoption, it starts at the top said James.

“The [AI] conversation happens not at the experimentation level or the pockets of POCs or in conversations with vendors, but actually is a discussion that's had at the boardroom table. And CEOs that actually are deliberately leading the conversation around AI and emerging tech are demonstrating the impact that flows through these organisations,” he said.

James told Digital Nation Australia, that businesses that invested in AI over the last five years are now starting to see organisational benefit today.

“The expectation of technology actually delivering outcomes is one thing, but then actually instantiating and seeing and realising the benefit is the second,” said James.

“We are now seeing many of our clients actually coming to market with acknowledgement of the benefit that they've seen over these five years.”

According to James, optimism is the biggest difference between the leaders and the laggards, when it comes to AI adoption.

“The organisations that have shown this real appetite to embrace and drive, have actually gone into the investments with optimism. There's been a sense of, if we do this, we can anticipate that we will see a transformation of our businesses, transformation of the way we work, transformation of our operating models of our environments, and therefore the way we serve our customers or our citizens in the ecosystem that we play in,” he said.

He also points to a mindset shift that occurs when AI is a conversation led by the board and executive team.

“Board needs to take a leadership position and create a mandate for the organisation, that aligns to the vision, the purpose, the objectives of the organisation. And I think that taking this position on AI, that lines up to those organisation-wide objectives means that leadership is fundamental and key and core.”