The AI Mindset: Empowering Small and Mid-Sized Businesses to Thrive in a New Era

In December of 2022, our family beagle Max decided to investigate the presents under our Christmas tree. Unfortunately, one present contained a large bar of dark chocolate, and soon enough we were on our way to the vet, for a long evening of waiting. While we were sitting there, anxious but bored, I decided to show off a funny new website to my family–ChatGPT.

“Write a story about a beagle named Max who ate a bar of dark chocolate wrapped as a Christmas gift and had to go to the vet. After going he acquires the ability to talk and goes on a lecture circuit talking about the life of dogs.”  Out scrolled that first response:

Max the beagle was a curious little dog with a big appetite and a nose for adventure. He loved nothing more than exploring his surroundings and sniffing out new and interesting smells. So when he came across a wrapped gift under the Christmas tree, he couldn't resist the temptation to investigate…

Little did I know that this playful experiment would lead me to recognize a revolution in how individuals and businesses could leverage AI.

The Era of Generative AI

While I was familiar with different types of AI from my work running a technology group, I instantly knew that this was something different. This didn’t require any code to set up. The scope of “knowledge” was wide-ranging. I didn’t have to learn the features of the tool, I could just start typing and conversing to get answers. It was by no means perfect, and at times very strange.

Some of the things it said were flat-out wrong. Conversations would drift off into strange territory. If you corrected it you might receive an apology and the right answer immediately after. I started to describe using ChatGPT as having 24/7 access to a very eager, very smart intern with an unfortunate propensity to lie. It was great work–as long as you made sure to double check what you got back!

Despite these challenges, I was convinced that Generative AI was revolutionary technology. While I’m a technologist, and we often get overly excited about the latest new things, this felt different. I had watched the hype of virtual reality, and while it was neat, it always felt that practical applications were limited and far off. Blockchain, crypto, Web3, and NFTs had some interesting applications, but they often felt speculative—closer to gambling than a truly transformative technology. This, however, felt different from those recent areas of technological hype, despite its weird behaviors.

The rise of Generative AI reminded me of the advent of cloud infrastructure technology and Amazon Web Services (AWS). I had a front-row seat in the early adoption phase of AWS at large enterprises, and the impact it had on the technology landscape and business was immense. Suddenly you could easily run servers and databases without owning a data center and programmers could launch products without the time, expense, and complexity of managing the infrastructure. This shift democratized technology, sparking a surge of web-based tools that empowered businesses of all sizes. With the click of a mouse you could set up a website, sell online, manage your accounting, market your offerings, access capital, and leverage specialized tools suited to the particular needs and operations of your business, from scheduling to logistics to customer service.

A Personal Perspective on Technology and Small Business

But life as the owner of a small or mid-sized business still wasn’t an easy one. This was something I knew first-hand. Shortly after the birth of our second child in 2007, my wife decided to start a small business solving a problem we faced as new parents:  we wanted to use cloth diapers, but it was nearly impossible to see or purchase any of the new “modern cloth diaper” products locally, and the websites selling the products were mostly abysmal. From this experience was born DIaper Lab, which focused on retail sales and education for the greater Boston area.

At the time I was managing a web development group, and so the task of launching our website landed on me. While not a professional developer, I knew enough to battle through server configuration, writing pages by hand in HTML, coding little applications to support workshop registrations, and setting up eCommerce software. Over time, we adopted more manageable technology, but it always required significant effort and specialized expertise. There were always new ideas we wanted to pursue, but time was limited—especially since this was my 'nights and weekends' job, competing with family obligations like dinner prep, gymnastics practice, and birthday parties.

Overcoming the Limits of Time and Expertise

At the heart of my own struggles was the key challenge of all small and mid-sized businesses: the limits of available time and access to expertise. While access to capital has been the traditional approach to manage these needs–buying expertise and investing in time-saving capabilities–capital itself is always a constrained resource. And so the answer is usually to roll up your sleeves and be realistic about all of the things that just won’t happen and hope it works out.

Which leads us back to the current time in the evolution of technology. That moment of writing a silly story about a silly dog was like a fleeting glance through a distant door into an unknown place. Could it write more than a story? Could it give me feedback on what I write? Could it give me other advice? Could it teach me something? While not all of the things I explored worked as expected, more often than not the answer to all of those questions was “yes,” and with every passing month it only got better and developed even more capabilities.

Building the AI Mindset

And with these capabilities—expertise on nearly any subject, instantly available, and incredibly fast—the classic challenges of lacking time and expertise become less of a barrier to growth. This shift creates new opportunities for businesses of any size, making now the perfect time to dive in. This is the opportunity which now presents itself to individuals and businesses of any size, and now is the time to dive in. All it takes is the energy and effort to build an “AI Mindset” (to borrow a phrase from my colleague Tsedal Neeley and her co-author Paul Leonardi, who wrote the book “The Digital Mindset”). While one must learn some aspects of technology, the process is more about creating a new way of thinking and approaching problems, and leveraging these incredible new technologies in service to your needs.

In creating Basaltiq, I'm looking to serve as a trusted guide, helping people build their AI Mindset and enabling small and mid-sized businesses to successfully compete and thrive. This effort to serve as a guide is a new endeavor for me as well. However, I know that in addition to the expertise on technology and leadership I’ve acquired through my career, I’ve got an incredible set of new tools available to me–the same ones I want to help you use as well. I look forward to the journey, and hope some of you will come along and learn with me--in a workshop, through one-on-one coaching, or just following along with what I learn and share.  Let's see how we can work together and better serve our communities, customers, and partners in this new era of AI.