For this post, we asked our friend Travis Adney to discuss how his business utilizes AI. Travis is the Director of Innovation at Lawrence & Schiller and the Managing Director of their new Minneapolis office. His role involves explicitly identifying where marketing and technology intersect and what unique opportunities he can create for clients, as well as empowering his staff.
We asked: What’s one of your biggest successes, maybe, or biggest challenges in AI?
“There have probably been just as many challenges as there have been big wins, but that’s because there’s no playbook to this type of thing. My first passionate point is that you need to decentralize AI. Even though AI is on my job description, I can’t be the AI guy.
We have focused a lot on education with our staff: here’s how to use AI well and how to use it wisely. I think you have to continually talk about it. It has to be a conversation every single day. It can’t just be something that you schedule in as a one time meeting.
My goal for our agency is that each one of our folks is an AI generalist. As an agency we go deep into each of our departments or our disciplines, but we like to see the whole picture and understand how things connect across. That’s why it’s my professional and personal passion to try and get everyone to a level that you’re an AI generalist that can understand how AI is affecting your single sliver of this overall pie. Innovation does not happen in one single department or in a vacuum in one area.”
Travis’s insight into how to bring a company into the AI era reflects our experience at Modern Logic as well. Adopting the new technology can’t be one person’s job; nor can it be something you do once and then wipe your hands of it. Bringing your company into the future technology landscape requires an all-hands-on-deck approach.
Want to learn more? Check out our podcast: Episode #9: Real Strategies for AI for Businesses with Travis Adney
(art by Becka Rahn)
