Dave Hengartner rready - How Employee Driven Innovation Transforms Corporate Ventures | EP79
🎯 Summary
[{“key_takeaways”=>[“Ready AI originated from an internal innovation program at Swisscom, which spun out into an independent venture four and a half years ago.”, “The platform addresses the massive ‘innovation gap’ where 83% of companies prioritize innovation, but only 3% deliver on their goals.”, “Employee entrepreneurship involves providing internal innovators with the tools, space, and support to execute their ideas, similar to how Steve Jobs treated the Macintosh team.”, “Ready AI functions as a SaaS provider for various innovation programs (idea management, portfolio management, trend management) built on a flexible, API-first architecture.”, “AI is integrated to solve specific innovation problems, particularly by supercharging ideation workflows, validating ideas against market signals, and tapping into internal data sources (ERPs, CRMs).”, “Successful AI adoption hinges on seamless integration into existing workflows (one-click execution) and clear communication that AI is an assistant for productivity, not just a cost-cutting threat.”, “Data governance, privacy (ISO certifications), and the ability to integrate customer-specific LLMs are crucial for enterprise adoption.”], “overview”=>”Dave Hengartner, CEO of Ready AI, discusses how his company provides the tools, resources, and support necessary for employee-driven innovation within large corporations, essentially acting as an internal venture builder. Ready AI has evolved from an internal innovation methodology at Swisscom into a comprehensive SaaS platform that leverages AI to solve the persistent innovation gap plaguing large enterprises. The core focus is on systematically increasing the volume and relevance of ideas by supercharging ideation through structured workflows and external/internal data signals.”, “themes”=>[“Employee-Driven Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, “The Innovation Gap and Corporate Challenges”, “AI as a Tool for Innovation Throughput”, “SaaS Platform Architecture and Flexibility”, “Enterprise AI Adoption Hurdles (Governance, Privacy, Integration)”, “The Future of Work and Job Impact of AI”]}]
🏢 Companies Mentioned
💬 Key Insights
"And we recently saw this MIT study that this I think it said like 95% of AI pilots fail. I really believe it's because it's just not well integrated in a workflow."
"So at the end, we see ourselves also as more as this kind of intelligence layer that we are kind of we can build agentic workflows using tapping into data, tapping into tools that are already there."
"Now recently we launched that our customers can bring their own LLMs. Like, let's say you develop your own GPT trained with your company data. Now, with one click, you integrate this kind of API key to our platform, and out of a sudden, the Ready AI is much more smart..."
"Now one is, how can we supercharge employees in ideation? So we have whole authentic workflows that are guiding employees from a business challenge for the corporation all the way to a sound idea which tackles the problem we're solving."
"I think in general, I think entry-level jobs are at more risk looking at lawyers, developers, absolutely. I think all these analyst shops which are research-heavy, look just ChatGPT research."
"Our platform is fully API first, so we can fully integrate to okay, that's good. Price architecture, sure, obviously like the Microsoft, the single sign-on, Active Directory, all that kind of stuff."