Does Artificial Intelligence Rewrite the Playbook for Building Great Products?

(This article originally appeared on www.bondmarketinnovation.com)

AI is hot. Really hot. Every fifth post on LinkedIn entails artificial intelligence in some way, shape, or form. 

Here is the question that I've asked myself, and maybe you have asked yourself too - Now that AI is here to stay, does it rewrite the playbook of how great products are built? 

Let me just state my answer up front and later give credence to this: 

No, it does not. 

AI, in and of itself, does not make a product fantastic. 

I just came from an AI conference in NYC where Michael Burke from Google said, “The most impactful thing you can do in your business is owning the entire customer journey of the customer." He went on to say, “The success of companies over the next five years is going to just as much about technology as it is about a beautiful product and beautiful product messaging.” 

Or in the words of Jeff McMillan from Morgan Stanley, "AI, by itself, is useless. It has to be linked to a business problem." 

In other words, AI for the sake of AI is the wrong starting point. 

The starting place is not, “We need some more AI in our organization. We’re behind the eight ball. Everyone else is doing AI and we aren’t. We need to do AI. I’ll call the technology team and tell them to get to work."

No, AI needs to be wielded with a purpose in mind. AI is a means to an end and not an end in itself. We don’t do AI so that we can market ourselves as slick and on the cutting edge. If you haven't identified a problem, don't understand the journey of the customer and what they are trying to accomplish, haven't designed experiments to mock up potential solutions, and haven't developed an MVP, then don't do AI. If you haven’t objectively established that you have a problem and a very viable solution in hand, don’t do AI. Please don’t. You will end up wasting a lot of effort and while keeping your eye on the the wrong ball - artificial intelligence - and not solving the customer’s problem where you should focus. 

AI is does not replace the process of customer discovery. It starts with a business need. AI does not rewrite that playbook. 

But once you have went through the customer discovery process, if appropriate for the use case, AI can be a force multiplier to the value that you are providing. It can enable entry to a realm of greater productivity. AI is not pixie dust that you spread on something and everything just gets better. It’s about better enabling a value proposition along the customer journey. 

At the end of the day, the success of anything you build will be a result of product/market fit - when you match an intense problem in the right market with a solution that is the expression of experiences that fulfills the functional, emotional, and social longings of your customer. If AI is mechanism and means to best accomplish that end, then go for it!

Remember also, it is people who will open up their wallets and buy your product. People won’t buy your product because it incorporates AI. They will buy your product because it’s better than alternatives to solve the progress they are trying to achieve. If you’re looking at innovating internally, it is the individuals experiencing the problem or the frustration that are the consumers of what you seek to develop and achieve. The fundamental work of innovation doesn’t change. Beautiful product experiences that fully capture the functional, emotional and social unmet intentions of your user are paramount. 

Let's get the priorities right. AI won’t solve your problems if you’re not solving the customer’s problems in the first place.