Skip to content
Generic filters
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Search in excerpt
Filter by Article Type
Papers
Events
Tools
Funding Articles
Case Studies
Resources
Opportunities
Theme Editor Blogs
Filter by Categories
Business model innovation
Ideation and creativity in R&D
Latest news
Managing international R&D
Managing technology platforms
Managing the R&D pipeline
Open innovation
Outsourcing R&D
Project valuation and selection
R&D strategy
Roadmapping
Stage gate processes
Technology intelligence
  • Home
  • About
    • About R&D Today
    • Contributors
    • R&D Publications
    • R&D Today newsletter archive
  • Themes
    • R&D Management
      • Rationale for key themes
      • Ideation and creativity in R&D
      • Managing international R&D
      • Managing the R&D pipeline
      • Open Innovation
      • Roadmapping
      • Technology Strategy
    • Special Features
      • Innovation for a Sustainable Future
      • How to measure the value created by innovation
      • Dynamic capabilities for strategic innovation
      • Would a ‘Strategy Lab’ provide sustainable renewal of competitive advantage?
      • Design Thinking
      • China’s new model for Open Innovation
      • Penetrating the fog of Agile
      • The resurgence of frugal innovation
      • Impact of digital technologies
    • Key Conference Tracks
      • Business model innovation
      • Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, Innovation Ecosystems and platforms
      • Intellectual Property Rights
      • Sustainable Innovation
    • Innovation Leadership
  • RADMA
    • About RADMA
    • R&D Project Exchange
    • Celebrating 40 Years of RADMA
    • RADMA Scholars
    • R&D Management Journal
  • The Pentathlon Framework
    • Strategy
    • Ideas
    • Selection & Prioritisation
    • Implementation
    • People & Organisations
  • Knowledge Hub
  • R&D Management Conference
  • Events
    • Upcoming events
    • Events Archive
  • Contact
  • Home
  • About
    • About R&D Today
    • Contributors
    • R&D Publications
    • R&D Today newsletter archive
  • Themes
    • R&D Management
      • Rationale for key themes
      • Ideation and creativity in R&D
      • Managing international R&D
      • Managing the R&D pipeline
      • Open Innovation
      • Roadmapping
      • Technology Strategy
    • Special Features
      • Innovation for a Sustainable Future
      • How to measure the value created by innovation
      • Dynamic capabilities for strategic innovation
      • Would a ‘Strategy Lab’ provide sustainable renewal of competitive advantage?
      • Design Thinking
      • China’s new model for Open Innovation
      • Penetrating the fog of Agile
      • The resurgence of frugal innovation
      • Impact of digital technologies
    • Key Conference Tracks
      • Business model innovation
      • Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, Innovation Ecosystems and platforms
      • Intellectual Property Rights
      • Sustainable Innovation
    • Innovation Leadership
  • RADMA
    • About RADMA
    • R&D Project Exchange
    • Celebrating 40 Years of RADMA
    • RADMA Scholars
    • R&D Management Journal
  • The Pentathlon Framework
    • Strategy
    • Ideas
    • Selection & Prioritisation
    • Implementation
    • People & Organisations
  • Knowledge Hub
  • R&D Management Conference
  • Events
    • Upcoming events
    • Events Archive
  • Contact

Menu

Is AI the new R&D function in modern corporations?

In their book “Competing in the Age of AI”, Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani discuss how how reinventing the firm around data, analytics, and AI removes traditional constraints on scale, scope, and learning that have restricted business growth for hundreds of years. Although written before the Covid-19 pandemic it now has a particular resonance. Digitisation of all industries has been accelerated and this has changed business models and supply chains and created social and ethical considerations.

Jeremy Klein, chair of RADMA, interviewed one of the authors, Marco Iansiti, about the conclusions of the book and its implications.

Jeremy Klein: The book has had good reviews, including in our journal. You’ve obviously covered several interconnected themes – data, AI, networks, the new architecture of corporations with humans pushed to the periphery. If there were just one key idea or insight that you would want readers to come away with, what would it be?

Prof. Marco Iansiti: The central idea in the book is that we are seeing the emergence of a new kind of corporation, one that is architected around integrated, sharable data assets powering widespread AI based innovation and enabling previously unforeseen scale, scope, and learning. The core concept here is architecture. Traditional organisations are built around focused groups and independent teams, while digital transformation requires re-architecting them into a novel organisational form. At the core, this is why this phase of digital transformation is so challenging.

Competing in the Age of AI

JK: In the book you paid quite a lot of attention to ethics and governance, identifying five challenges – digital amplification, bias, security, control and inequality. What are your thoughts about the anti-vax movement that has grown around Covid-19? 

MI: The ethical implications are really important. Karim and I get a lot of interest and many questions about this, and this is where much of my current interest is focused. It is incredible how important this topic has become. Fundamentally it is one of the main reasons the pandemic is still with us. Mis/dis information, enabled by digital scale scope and learning is making it almost impossible to approach key problems, from global warming to protecting democracy.

JK: In response to one review in Linked-in we debated whether the B2B impacts of AI might have lost out to B2C in your analysis. B2C is more immediate and visible, of course. Have you been monitoring the use of AI behind the scenes in manufacturing and process automation? It seems to me that the growth of AI-powered ‘digital twins’ is something we should be taking seriously.

MI: Of course. The book is centered around consumer centric case studies as this part of the economy has had the most impetus in driving digital transformation, compelled by important drivers like personalisation and customer centric business logic. B2B is not far behind, although the use cases are more dispersed, and perhaps less immediately compelling. AI is being deployed in B2B businesses across the board, and changing the way these work, with applications ranging from supply chain to HR.

JK: It is intriguing that despite being largely about leading edge technologies, the book doesn’t have much to say about R&D specifically. I’d be interested in your views on this. Do you think that R&D as a category of activity will disappear? Or do you think it’s more that R&D activities will take place in a new organisational formation?

MI: It is incredible how the many lessons we learned over the years regarding the management of R&D apply to digital transformation. From portfolio management to agile teams, to product management capabilities, to the critical value of culture in innovation.

In essence, the development and deployment of AI based applications has become the new R&D function in the modern corporation, in businesses ranging from Netflix to JP Morgan Chase. I would emphasise that the role and impact of R&D (broadly defined to include driving innovation in any aspect of the firm) has dramatically increased.

Marco Iansiti
Prof. Marco Iansiti

Marco Iansiti, David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration, is a co-director of the Laboratory for Information Science at Harvard and of the Digital Initiative at the Harvard Business School.

Find Professor Iansiti on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Read Jeremy Klein’s review of ‘Competing in the Age of AI’

  • 11 January 2022
View our newsletter archive
  • Related posts

    • Who’s steering future innovation – humans or AI?
    • AI can help you win at new product development – Dr Robert Cooper says now is the time to act
    • The downsides of AI in innovation
    • Contextual Specificity in R&D Management
    • Contextual Specificity in R&D Management – an interview with Jeremy Klein
    • Using AI to optimise investigator site selection for clinical trials
    • Precision meets accountability: The future of AI in R&D
    • Innovating with Large Language Models (LLMs): the role of AI in knowledge extraction and generation
    • Open Innovation and AI: Collaborating to Foster Knowledge Flows and Value Creation
    • The Next Generation of R&D Management in China
    • R&D in China – the trends, models and the learning points
    • A semiotic perspective of AI in R&D Management
  • Have your say

    Have your say / Follow us

    Linkedin Soundcloud Twitter Youtube Linkedin-in

    R&D Today is the outreach site for the Research and Development Management Association, a charitable organisation that supports research, best practice and innovation.  www.radma.net

    Click here to sign up to our newsletter, and
     click here to view our newsletter archive.

    © Copyright R&D Today

    2025.

    All rights reserved.