How to introduce advanced technology into a stodgy organisation

It is rare to see a company strategy where AI does not feature high in the list. Yet the results from such projects are often underwhelming, cost more than planned and took longer than expected. 

Read: "Why companies end up spending more on digital technologies than anticipated"

Leaving that to one side these lessons from the US military are also experienced by insurers. e.g.

"Data are often thrown away or stored locally (the initial Maven drone footage had to be collected at bases on cd-roms). They come in all sorts of formats and are badly catalogued."

Many a claims adjuster cannot upload videos from policyholders as they are trapped at the firewall. Or once received in different formats they cannot be embedded in the digital claims record.

Of such minutiae are AI projects scuppered. Data hidden in silos and unstructured data contained in free-text boxes or the thousands of documents arriving daily by post and email. If these data are inaccessible you are hobbling any AI project.

Insist on a data-hub and platform that can ingest large volumes of documents and automatically machine read and make accessible, joined and matched and ready for analysis and AI.

Of such simple things AI software and projects depend for success. 

And don't forget the key lesson in the linked article. 

"JAIC’s main output will not be whizz-bang software or even weapons, but infrastructure to develop them."

“The foundation is in place; now all they have to do is execute.” Many bosses know the feeling