You’ve heard a lot about AI, and you’ve experimented with it here and there. But how can you apply it effectively for your business?
Suddenly issues like data protection and efficiency become crucially important. You don’t want to compromise sensitive information or waste time on ultimately useless AI applications.
Are you not making yourself redundant by showing how your work could be done better with AI?
Before you begin
In a business context you often deal with sensitive data, whether it’s internal knowledge or data belonging to others, like your customers or employees. In the EU, you’re legally required to protect the latter with care.
That’s why it’s essential to choose an AI provider and plan that won’t use your data for training and ensures you retain full ownership of the output. This is not the case with free accounts, and even some paid versions.
For this reason, I use a ‘team account’ from OpenAI (as of May 2025).
Ideally you should go for a European provider, and you can also run AI locally on your own servers. For this to work, you’ll need to know what you’re doing as well as have the required resources at hand. A smart investment for a big corporation like an insurance company or a bank. However, for small and medium enterprises such as myself this is not (yet) a viable option.
With AI, I put together a short PDF summary of various options for European SMEs in that regard:
As with every AI result, the golden rule applies here, too: use it for inspiration only or as a starting point for your own research.
AI can make mistakes, and the responsibility (fortunately) still lies with you.
Learning to understand AI
A book that really helped me understand and make the most of AI’s potential is “Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI” by Ethan Mollick. This book is rightfully one of the bestselling titles on AI:
Ethan urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher and coach. He gives numerous examples, tips and methods to get started directly.
Without using hyperbole nor doomsday thinking, he demonstrates the opportunities and implications of AI in a clear and concise voice. Highly recommended!
Deploying AI in business environments
AI and its applications are evolving at an incredible pace. To stay on top of all the relevant developments, I also subscribed to Ethan’s blog newsletter (oneusefulthing.org).
These two articles are the ones I usually recommend to clients and their teams as a starting point:
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/making-ai-work-leadership-lab-and
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-cybernetic-teammate
With these three elements—a secure setup through the right AI service, the clear methods from the book, and the latest insights from Ethan’s blog—you’ve got a solid foundation to get started on your own.
Why you can’t do without it anymore
AI won’t replace you, but someone who uses AI could. This is true for businesses as well as people. Whatever way you look at it, AI is here to stay and will keep evolving.
Because this new “General Purpose Technology” has such a great impact on our lives and the way we work, we need to familiarize us with it.
For me, this means that I suddenly got an extra employee full of unprecedented knowledge and capabilities. Like any good manager, it’s up to me to evaluate this knowledge and these skills using my human experience and expertise – and put them to good use.
Far from everything AI comes up with is correct, relevant or ethically sound. If you don’t have the expertise to judge the result yourself, don’t use it.
When you manage to apply AI effectively in your field, you become truly indispensable. It’s the combination of AI and your unique expertise and human perspective that makes the real difference.
Think of AI as an extra pair of hands—and an extra brain. Enjoy learning how to work with it!
Want to know more?
In my next article, I’ll share how I use AI, when I choose not to, and how it has shaped the way I work.
Can’t wait or have a specific question about boosting your innovation power? Don’t hesitate to reach out. Speak soon!
