How the wow factor drives innovation at Northeast Grocery

To drive democratization, we follow ECTERS, which is educate, coach, train the trainer, empower, reinforce, and support, which helps nurture and embed internal AI talent. For ChatGPT Enterprise, for example, we use town halls to educate employees about AI use cases, coached through the establishment of an early adopter AI Champions group, and provide power users with advanced training. For empowerment, we’ve introduced prompt engineering guides and access to an AI knowledge hub, and we reinforce training through AI forums about high-value use cases. We also provide support through dedicated AI phone-a-friend peer communities and office hours.

What is the role of the CIO in our age of AI?

A key part is to educate. We’re creating a new environment that empowers the business to leverage data better. These business discussions are much better if everyone understands how AI works, what’s possible, and how to apply a functional domain lens to a problem set in order to create solutions they never thought were possible, and in a relatively short period of time. Another part of the role is to drive momentum. Your new job is to create, support, and nurture that innovation wheel so as new AI tools come onto the market, you can rotate the wheel and keep the momentum going. With AI, we can now deliver the wow factor, which increases momentum and shows the power of the wheel to the entire enterprise. In IT, we’re no longer ticket-takers; we’re momentum creators. A third key aspect is being facilitators of the future. By democratizing AI innovation, IT can now share its responsibility to anticipate future customer behavior with the entire organization by bringing new tools and information to the business user, and then training them to leverage that power. This takes a different way of thinking than a traditional CIO role.