As artificial intelligence reaches new heights of capability and attention, organizations everywhere are grappling with how to effectively leverage these powerful tools while managing their inherent risks and limitations. At BRI Associates, we've carefully considered AI's role in new product development and innovation, particularly within our Growth Forge platform.
The Current AI Landscape
We're witnessing an unprecedented explosion of AI activity and innovation, particularly in generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and agentic workflows. While the potential applications in new product development and innovation are exciting, we believe a measured, pragmatic approach is essential.
AI's Role in Innovation and New Product or Business Innovation
The benefits of AIi n new product or business innovation work are significant. AI tools can dramatically accelerate complex information analysis and content creation for market research and experimentation. They can also surface unexpected perspectives and insights for ideation and strategy option exploration that might otherwise be overlooked or limited by common biases.
However, these benefits come with important caveats. Current LLMs are fundamentally trained on existing data, making them better at synthesis than true innovation. They can produce convincing but incorrect information with seeming authority and validating their outputs against real-world conditions can be challenging.There are also data security considerations when using public or third-party models.
Perhaps most importantly, over-reliance on AI tools can potentially reduce opportunities for innovators to build their own analytic expertise and pattern recognition capabilities – skills that are crucial for long-term success in innovation and product development.
Our Approach to AI in our Growth Forge Software
Growth Forge will continue to provide a predictable and structured process for new product or business innovation and will incorporate AI-based features that can significantly accelerate, simplify, and enhance specific tasks.
Based on these considerations, we've developed clear guidelines for AI integration within Growth Forge:
Appropriate Use Cases
We encourage using AI for:
- Strategy hypothesis development and refinement
- Market and ecosystem analysis
- Summarizing and helping explore and distill insights from primary research data and evidence
- Developing experimental content and artifacts
- Testing surveys or market experiments to tune them for optimal results
However, AI should not be used as:
- A substitute for actual real-world and market validation
- A source of internal company policies or assumptions (with some rare exceptions)
- A decision-making tool
Human-Centered Control
Our fundamental principle is "human always in the loop." While AI can be tremendously helpful, it shouldn't be blindly trusted. In Growth Forge:
- All AI capabilities must be explicitly initiated by users
- Users maintain full control over which AI-generated content is incorporated into project models
- AI serves as an assistant, not a replacement or substitute for human product or business development leadership
Transparency and Security
We're implementing robust measures to ensure transparent and secure AI usage:
- All company data used in AI prompts is accessible to users
- Sources are cited for AI-generated responses
- Prompts are designed to minimize speculation
- Company data remains within private databases
- No company data is used for LLM training or fine-tuning
- We only integrate with AI models that offer strong data privacy options
- Companies can choose their preferred LLM from supported options
Enterprise Control
We understand that organizations need flexibility in managing AI usage. Growth Forge will provide:
- A master switch to enable/disable AI functions
- Secure company data management
- Options to select preferred AI models from supported providers
- Granular control over AI feature implementation
Looking Forward
We recognize that AI technology is rapidly evolving, bringing both new opportunities and challenges.Our position and policies will continue to evolve as the technology matures. We're committed to helping our clients leverage AI's benefits while maintaining appropriate guardrails and controls.
We'll update thisposition as new developments warrant. Our focus remains on providing our clients with powerful, practical tools for innovation while ensuring responsible AI integration that supports rather than supplants human judgmentand creativity.
*Note: This represents our current position as of February 2025. We will post updates as AI technology evolves and new opportunities and risks emerge.
