“Mind the Gap”—that single phrase caught my eye on my way back from London. “Mind the gap between the train and the platform.” But I saw a different gap: “Mind the gap between business and AI.”
Working in a Bubble
I traveled to London at Miro’s invitation to attend Canvas 26, where I gave a talk on Strategy-as-Software. The conference revolved around Collaborative AI. “Teamwork AI✨mplified” was written everywhere. The “Canvas as Context” for human-human, agent-agent, and human-agent interaction. Closing the decision gap between human and artificial intelligence.
In the evening, I reflected on the conference day, and suddenly the song “Living in a Bubble” played in my head. Canvas 26, which was all about collaboration, was itself a bubble. On site, I met: UX designers, product designers, product managers, innovation advisors, strategy consultants, workshop facilitators, and so on and so forth. All masters of communication and coordination.
But they are precisely NOT the ones who need a tool like Miro the most. For the designers and facilitators, pen and paper would suffice for their work: they are collaboration experts. Those who absolutely need the tool and its support weren’t there.
The business managers and executives with tough targets who are looking for solutions.
The software and AI engineers who are supposed to find those solutions and implement them quickly.
The Bubble Gap
They work in their own little bubble. I met them the next day.
The Lead AI Engineer, who told me that earlier this year, senior management sent an email saying, “We need to do agentic AI. Get to work.”
The business consultant, whose client employs 1,500 IT staff and can’t see any measurable uplift in business metrics. When the consultant asked him what the developers were reporting from their discussions with the business departments, he replied: “They don’t talk to each other.”
The boundaries between departments are too big and the differences in hierarchy too high.
A tool cannot break down silos. Culture can.
A tool cannot flatten hierarchies. Organization can.
A tool cannot create alignment. Strategy can.
However, a tool can build bridges.
From the business departments to the data & AI teams.
From idea to implementation.
From design to engineering.
From strategy to solutions.
Building Bridges Between Bubbles
A tool can bridge the gaps. A tool can bring people from different bubbles together. Then—and only then—does something new emerge and the existing change. Innovation and transformation require collaboration.
And that’s exactly the tool we’re developing at Datentreiber: we call it “Catalyst.”
A catalyst brings things together. It accelerates processes by reducing the energy required.
With our Data & AI Business Catalyst, we bring business, data, and AI experts together. It accelerates the process from discovery to delivery by reducing the effort required.
“Look Left” / “Look Right”—I saw that a lot in London, too. Let’s start looking left and right again, instead of just at the prompt on our screen.
AI Engineers, let’s look for the business users and ask what kind of information they need.
Data Engineers, let’s look for the AI Engineers and ask what kind of data they need.
Business Users, let’s look for the Data Engineers and ask what they need for data quality.
This is the way. Without gaps.
Catalyst Co-Creation Community
Would you like to join us on this way? Then come to our next virtual Lunch & Learn on June 25th. There we’ll showcase a first version of the Catalyst:
And we practice what we preach: we want to break out of our Datentreiber bubble and work with the community to co-create the catalyst. To that end, we invite you to join our Data & AI Business Design Community:
