1. Opportunity Discovery Insights
Generative AI, maybe you've heard of it. Google and Microsoft fired the opening salvos of the Generative AI war at each other and signaled that we had a new paradigm of AI products. They are proving Generative AI products can be created for the business and consumers. With our new opportunity discovery framework, let's look backward at Microsoft and Google’s opportunities to create and deliver value based on the types of data that they have the easiest access to.
2. Data access: Microsoft
Microsoft makes products for businesses and individuals. Much of its data comes from how people use products like Office 365, Power BI, Azure Cloud Services, and several other product lines that Microsoft offers to the business. The company also has consumer products like Xbox. Operating systems are not just business-facing but also consumer-facing products. Even Office 365 has business and consumer lines, but for the most part, everything Microsoft offers is tied to productivity outside of things like its gaming console.
3. Product focus: Microsoft
Microsoft has the easiest access to those types of data-generating processes. Its opportunities are primarily in the business or at least productivity space. Given that framework, the products they have rolled out with OpenAI are no surprise. Copilot represents the majority of Microsoft’s early Generative AI products, and it is focused on business applications.
4. A glance at Google
What about Google? What products has Google been focused on? Google’s leadership has discussed integrating Generative AI into their office and productivity suite. But compared with Office 365, Google has far less of a presence in the business world than in the search world. That's the data Google has easier and better access to.
Thinking in terms of the opportunity discovery framework, where will Google deliver the most value? Primarily in search use cases, but they also have products like YouTube. Google has a significant amount of data coming from YouTube, allowing it to service social media and content creation use cases with data, analytics, and advanced models.
5. Natural alignment
If you do opportunity discovery with respect to the data-generating processes, you have a natural alignment with the current business and operating models. That also connects with its competitive advantages vs the companies that could potentially deliver similar products.
Low-cost, easy access data generating processes are higher-value starting points than chasing opportunities that require going and finding processes that the business has difficulty getting data from. Stick to the processes that it has the best and lowest cost access to.
6. Data access guiding principles
For data, analytics, and machine learning opportunity discovery, it's critical to first explore what the business has access to. Does that mean we're taking everything else off the table? No, but from an opportunity discovery standpoint, we should exhaust all our low-cost opportunities first. Those have the highest margins and can be delivered fastest.
This opportunity discovery framework improves margins and the data team’s delivery speed. We're aligning initiatives with the strengths and weaknesses of the current business and operating models.
Yes, I said weaknesses. Businesses aren’t only faced with opportunities. There are also competitive threats, and we should think about how another company, like Microsoft, could come in and use technologies, like Generative AI, to disrupt Google's search business or ours.
We must be forward-looking with opportunities. I will discuss that more in the next section. The threat of another company coming in and using data, analytics, or advanced models to compete directly with the business is significant. Competitors can potentially undermine market leadership and the strength of existing product offerings. They could erode some of the business’s precious customer base.
Opportunity discovery should think of it in terms of strengths AND weaknesses. Threats could be on the horizon. The business could be forced to go in a direction because if it doesn't, competitors can exploit a significant weakness to gain market share or knock you off your pedestal.
7. Let's practice!