Conversations with Chief Innovators Ep 8: EVERSANA

Welcome to Conversations with Chief Innovators, where our former CEO Pat Sheridan discusses innovation in business with transformational leaders across industries. In the eighth episode, we bring you Scott Snyder, Chief Digital Officer of EVERSANA, a recognized thought leader in emerging technologies, and co-author of Goliath’s Revenge.

Watch the full episode below:

I’m excited to bring you the Chief Digital Officer at EVERSANA, Digital Economy Platform Senior Fellow at the World Economic Forum, Senior Fellow at The Wharton School, and the co-author of one of the most influential books on innovation, Goliath’s Revenge. What might surprise you is that these are the accomplishments of the same person — Scott Snyder.

Scott is an influential thought leader in emerging technologies. He has over 30 years of experience in business leadership, strategy, innovation, and technology management for Fortune 500 companies and startup ventures.

I recently sat down with Scott to talk about AI and innovation. Here are a few excerpts from our conversation.

1. What do most companies get wrong about innovation?

The hardest challenge for companies is achieving continual innovation within their current model. That is so important because your current business is your most important asset. It generates cash flow and if you don’t keep it competitive, you will miss out.

The success rate of innovation labs is abysmal because most companies feel they can hire a bunch of coders and data scientists to trigger innovation. That sounds great until you try to bring those ideas back to the mothership.

Big companies that successfully innovate understand they need a sense of ownership. People in your current business must play an active role and should recognize the need to create new ventures. It begins with a culture of innovation, which becomes critical when you want to take big swings and build the next version of your company.

2. How can companies foster innovation?

There are three things enterprises should focus on:

1. Create an investment council that looks at the projects with ruthless prioritization. The board needs to be balanced with people who are looking at the current business, as well as its future goals. It also helps immensely to bring in a few independent tie-breakers, i.e. people who have credibility and can look at things from a market-neutral perspective.

2. You need to find venture GMs. These are rare people who have an entrepreneurial attitude and can inspire people but also have credibility in the core business. They exist in most companies. However, you may have to seek them out, as they sometimes get stuck in traditional legacy career paths.

3. Populate venture teams with not just shiny new digital talent but a mix of institutional legacy talent. This will give you the best of both worlds.

3. How are you looking at AI and its impact over the past few months?

GenAI is currently having an iPhone moment. While classical AI has been with us for a while and our company has been using it, GenAI has opened up the innovations to the masses. It’s very similar to how the iPhone made smartphones mainstream.

When GenAI came into the picture, the leadership team at EVERSANA sounded the alarm. We realized it’s not just an evolution of old AI. It will change everything.

The initial instinct of most companies is to run experiments, i.e., “Let’s try Copilot!” “Let’s start training people!”

That’s cool, as it can give your company a certain amount of literacy about the pros and cons of GenAI. However, the bigger opportunity is to go future-back. Companies must rethink their entire operating model in a world that’s fully leveraging GenAI. That’s where true disruption will occur.

For instance, at EVERSANA, we own a full-service agency that creates content. There are a lot of hours spent in the content supply chain. So, we decided that we were going to be disrupters, not disrupted. We went in early and decided to rethink our entire content supply chain to be AI-first.

4. We are still in the early stages of GenAI. What are your thoughts on this inflection moment?

GenAI, like other revolutions, will go through its share of fits and starts. I talk about the three Rs a lot when it comes to AI:

1. Responsibility: What are our guardrails against the disruption caused by AI?

2. Reliability: Are we picking use cases suited to AI and its availability to perform at a reliable rate?

3. ROI: I don’t think any of us has a good sense of the ROI of AI tools, mostly because companies are treating them as pilots, not products. With infrastructure and API costs, getting a grip on ROI will be a big challenge.

While I am super optimistic about the promise of AI, we still have a lot to learn. My suggestion is to look for use cases where there are tons of hours at stake and the potential for significant time savings. For example, if you do a lot of in-house development, you better explore tools that can help with code development and code review.

There will be a day when people won’t go to the web like they do now. You won’t go to Shopify, WebMD, or Expedia anymore. You will just deal with your AI agent. How will that change business? The effect would be dramatic.

5. What advice would you give to someone starting as the Director of AI in an organization?

You have to be an AI champion within each aspect of the organization, including HR, finance, and other business functions. There must be a sense of ownership and an ability to coordinate cross-functional initiatives.

You also need to be skilled at prioritizing initiatives. Otherwise, you will end up with a bunch of half-built products. Remember that bold businesses will create sidecar shadow versions of themselves with a clean sheet to make the most of the AI revolution. This will entail a shift in how incubators are operating. They will need to redirect their focus from revenue generation to internal operations and create the foundation for radical innovation.

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