AiThority Interview with Clark O’Niell, Managing Director and Partner, BCG

Clark O’Niell, Managing Director and Partner, BCG, in this interview, talks about the importance of Responsible AI in cybersecurity, the strategic integration of AI into business functions, and the significant role of change management in digital transformation.

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Hi Clark, welcome to our AiThority Interview Series. Can you briefly outline your journey into AI, infrastructure, and cybersecurity?

I’m a career techie. I began my career designing chips for PlayStation, Xbox, and supercomputers, but soon discovered my passion for technology strategy. Over the years, I have alternated between working for tech companies and consulting, always emphasizing enterprise technology. Today, I work with leading investors who are investing in AI, Infrastructure, and Cybersecurity. I still enjoy being hands-on and contributing to the development of BCG’s internal AI and software tools.

Also Read: AiThority Interview with Carolyn Duby, Field CTO and Cyber Security GTM Lead at Cloudera

Cybersecurity remains a critical concern for many organizations. How is BCG leveraging AI to enhance cybersecurity measures for its clients? Can you highlight some innovative approaches or solutions that have been particularly effective?

Managing AI security is one of the biggest adoption challenges for our clients. Deploying AI solutions comes with real data security and privacy risks. AI solutions can also have material bias and hallucination challenges. This is why it’s essential to have a robust Responsible AI program. Responsible AI is foundational to all of our AI programs and a focus area for our innovation efforts. BCG has been recognized for our significant contributions to Responsible AI, such as ARTKIT, our open source library for testing GenAI systems.

How does AI influence strategic planning and decision-making processes at BCG? What frameworks or methodologies do you use to integrate AI into these critical business functions?

Like many organizations, BCG has developed a much longer list of opportunities for harnessing AI than we can currently pursue. We have to prioritize and focus where AI can have the biggest impact. We typically start by evaluating effort versus impact. Where are there opportunities that can move the needle for our business using today’s technology? Generally, we prefer to buy best-of-breed solutions.

However, it’s often challenging for industry-standard solutions to provide a strategic advantage. Thus, BCG is also building AI solutions for our business where we can create differentiation. Evaluating what to build versus buy versus wait on has become incredibly complex. The pace of AI innovation is dizzying, but we’ve found many no-regret opportunities with these simple frameworks.

In your experience, what are the significant barriers to digital transformation for large enterprises like BCG?

People change is always the hardest challenge. We have developed an adage over the years doing many digital transformations we call 10-20-70. 10% of the effort is the AI algorithm development, 20% is building the technology infrastructure, and 70% is driving the change management. There are almost always tradeoffs when adopting new technologies. GenAI is incredibly powerful, but still has a lot of rough edges. Many organizations are struggling to get value from AI right now because they are focused on use cases and tasks. To realize the full potential from GenAI, organizations have to reshape their core roles and processes. This requires substantial change management. Many organizations fund the technology journey but under-invest in the hardest part – people change.

Also Read: Role of AI in Cybersecurity: Protecting Digital Assets From Cybercrime

With a background in R&D, what are some of the most exciting AI-driven innovations by BCG that are helping clients drive growth?

I’ve always been amazed by BCG’s personalization solutions. Being able to engage customers with the right message for the right product at the right time has always been impressive. GenAI is taking personalization to the next level and accelerating growth.

AI is revolutionizing sales and marketing. How is BCG advising clients to leverage AI for better customer insights, targeted marketing, and improved sales performance?

Across our clients we consistently see that Sales and Marketing is one of the best places to apply AI. Many sales organizations still rely on sellers’ intuitions, but AI can provide real insights on which prospects have the highest chance of closing. AI is also a fantastic tool to deliver real-time feedback to sellers.  We are using AI to nudge sellers with best practices during live customer conversations.  We are even starting to use AI for autonomous selling. We are leveraging gaming technology to build AI avatars that can close simple customer transactions.

As we wrap up, what are your top tips for AI professionals on structuring their days for maximum productivity and effectiveness?

One of my favorite productivity tools is Superhuman. I live in email and Zoom and I couldn’t get to inbox zero without Superhuman. It saves me hours per week and keeps me sane.

Thank you, Clark O’Niell, for your insights; we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.

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