How Generative AI Can Augment Human CreativityThere is tremendous apprehension about the potential of generative AI—technologies that can create new content such as audio, text, images, and video—to replace people in many jobs. But one of the biggest opportunities generative AI offers to businesses and governments is to augment human creativity and overcome the challenges of democratizing innovation.
The term “democratizing innovation” was coined by MIT’s Eric von Hippel, who, since the mid-1970s, has been researching and writing about the potential for users of products and services to develop what they need themselves rather than simply relying on companies to do so. In the past two decades or so, the notion of deeply involving users in the innovation process has taken off, and today companies use crowdsourcing and innovation contests to generate a multitude of new ideas. However, many enterprises struggle to capitalize on these contributions because of four challenges.