The Secrets of AI Value Creation

11Cultivating an AI‐Friendly Culture

Revitalizing people has a lot less to do with changing people and has a lot more to do with changing the context that companies, that senior managers […] create around their people. Context, some manager called it ‘the smell of the place’, it's a hard thing to describe.

—Sumantra Ghoshal (Harvard and MIT professor)

There is a fascinating legend about Nobel Prize–winning physicist Neils Bohr often cited by renowned European philosopher Slavoj Zizek (Belinski 2016). According to the story, Bohr hung a horseshoe over the entrance of his country house, a practice believed to bring luck in many cultures around the world. When his friend asked him if he too believed in the horseshoe magic, he famously replied, ‘Of course I don't believe in it. But I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it!’ (Belinski 2016). Bohr's paradoxical statement shows the power of culture. Even when he said he did not believe, his action betrayed his unconscious, deeply held superstition. Let's play a little game to see if you are influenced by the culture you grew up in. Take a look at this sequence of numbers and see if you can guess what number comes up next:

8, 14, 20, 26, 32

Did you guess 38? Most would say yes. But the truth is, any number could be the next in the sequence. Our years of educational experience led us to believe that the sequence had a reasoning. But nothing says they all have to be 6 apart – that just came up ...