The PDMA Handbook of Innovation and New Product Development, 4th Edition

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE HYBRID INTELLIGENCE FOR INNOVATION:AUGMENTING NPD TEAMS WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING

Frank T. Piller, Sebastian G. Bouschery, and Vera Blazevic

21.1 Innovation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are perhaps the technologies with the most impact on industries and societies. But Cockburn et al. (2019) argue that AI’s greatest economic impact is still to come: its potential as a new method of invention. New methods of invention that can reshape the nature of the innovation process are relatively rare, and AI could be one of these rare cases. Two opening case examples may serve as an illustration of this change. Choosy, a New York-based fashion brand, delivers algorithmically informed fashion items in as little as two weeks (Eldor 2020). Founded by Jessie Zeng in 2018, the company’s core assets are a group of algorithms that basically do most of its NPD work. First, a predictive algorithm using natural language processing spots top-trending fashion on Instagram by creating a database of all posts from a large group of influencers and visually tracking not just their posts, but also all comments received. This allows Choosy to rank the popularity of specific items and their underlying design features. Once the team (and algorithm) is sure that they discovered a hot fashion trend not covered ...