Practicing Innovation in the AI Age

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AI as Thinking Partner

So just what might the future hold for the corporate innovator? For Prapti Jha, Innovation Strategist, We Speak Innovation, she sees AI as having a broad influence. In some ways, this is about communicating innovation more easily and effectively to others. Can anyone now be an innovator?

Jha observes, “One of the biggest shifts that I see coming is because of this generative AI boom, we all can learn something about a field that was totally a black box for us. And innovation is a part of it. People from other fields can also learn a little bit about innovation easily, pretty much as compared to the time it would take them earlier. The same goes for the innovators for other fields like manufacturing or any other field that might feel like a closed box to us.”

“We all have that access to information in a much more digestible way,” says Jha. “This leads eventually to a world, a corporate setting, where we’ll have an intra-collaborative, interdisciplinary setting—basically all the different disciplines working together. This is something that innovators have always pushed towards to break the silos of the corporate world. But I see it happening even more with AI. This is happening in other fields as well, such as coding, where other people can now jump into that field and create that output.”

Surely, the discipline of innovation is more complex than just coding yet Jha makes the point that AI is flattening the landscape, and making it more accessible for all.

Jha says, “That leads us to the future, where there will be more interdisciplinary kinds of organizations. All of these functions will be more connected to each other and also at times overlapping with each other. I’m very curious to see how this would lead to actual change in organizational structures.”

“Because as innovators, we also work in the area of development and design. What would that 2030 design might look like with AI being such a huge player into our teams? Basically, AI is moving forward as a colleague that we have, and it’s making all of us much more capable of understanding something that would be hard for us to digest earlier. Again, things are moving so fast. Of course, next year, I might have more ideas about it or a different idea. But that’s what I’m thinking right now,” says Jha.

Jha brings up an interesting point of AI as a thinking partner. This could be key when exploring all of the AI solutions for innovation that are now developing in the marketplace.

Jha continues, “We need to capture the idea of how AI can be your thinking partner. How you think as a human and how can you leverage AI solutions or AI as a thinking partner is something of a mindset that we must develop. Once we have that mindset of leveraging AI for whenever we are doing a thinking job, and, of course, then also comes tangible jobs that we give AI to do for us. That gives us an opportunity to embrace all the different solutions. But that mindset, that approach, would still stay intact for a while, and that’s something that is important for us to understand and rewire our brains rather than just jumping into the solutions. If we have that approach, that mindset, that really helps us filter the things that we need and then look out for the solutions that are beneficial.”

Moving Ahead with Creative Velocity

For Leslie Grandy, Lead Executive in Residence, University of Washington – Michael G. Foster School of Business, “Generative AI can be crucial in helping overcome biases like Expert Think and organizational inertia. By possessing psychological distance from the problem and providing alternative perspectives and solutions that may not be influenced by human biases or traditional industry norms, generative AI can challenge teams to consider truly novel approaches to solving problems.”

Grandy, who is the author of Creative Velocity: Propelling Breakthrough Ideas in the Age of Generative AI, feels that AI can help teams with a wide range of collaborative tasks and creative skills.

“Any team—not just a team tasked with innovation—can partner with Generative AI through structured creative frameworks that help develop collaboration and creative thinking skills,” she says. “This means innovation can come from any role or level in an organization. Incorporating generative AI into the team’s creative processes can enhance their problem-solving abilities, accelerate innovation, and more effectively address complex customer needs. However, it’s important to view generative AI as a tool to augment human creativity rather than replace it. The most effective approach combines the analytical power and extensive knowledge base of generative AI with the nuanced understanding, empathy, and creative intuition of human product teams.”

As for what may be on the horizon, Grandy, feels it will still take a while to sort out the ethical issues and actual jobs that AI might reduce. Until then innovation awaits in any number of fields.

“I am fascinated by the conversation around artificial general intelligence,” relates Grandy. “I think this is what many people fear will be the engine for reducing enterprise human capital. It’s probably more than a decade off from realization, and it will likely take longer to sort out the ethical issues around its applications.”

She adds, “I also expect to see rapid growth in the use of digital twins across various industries, ranging from healthcare to building design and management. These ‘living models’ of complex systems can enhance everything from positive patient outcomes to building performance. Mixed-reality experiences will become more mainstream for the enterprise. While the metaverse garnered attention in popular culture, enterprise adoption of XR for training, remote collaboration, and simulations will accelerate. Penetration across verticals like consumer real estate and entertainment, along with hospitality, food services, and manufacturing, will continue to grow.”

Editor’s Note: Join us next week for part 2 of this blog, as we conclude our innovation best practices series.

Video courtesy of Plug and Play Tech Center

FEI25 Names Finalists for Collective Intelligence Startup Competition

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New Videos: Review the FEI25 Collective Intelligence Startup Competition Finalists

Introducing The Collective Intelligence Startup Competition Finalists

Accelidea, www.accelidea.com

Accelidea is a multi-agent AI platform that automates up to 80% of the regulatory, quality, and engineering workflows required to bring a medical device to market. Today, a typical Class II device takes 3.5 years to reach market, involving 16+ functional roles and over 5,000 handoffs. Even the most experienced teams are buried in fragmented tools, siloed processes, and repetitive manual documentation. These delays cost companies millions and most importantly, delay life-saving technologies from reaching patients. Unlike traditional tools, we’re not just digitizing forms. We’re building a system that thinks, flags gaps, and accelerates iteration. It’s the revolutionizing infrastructure layer for smarter, safer, faster medical innovation.

Ada IQ, www.adaiq.com

At Ada IQ, we’re reimagining how consumer products are designed. Our AI platform blends human intelligence with deep data to help companies move from idea to validated product concepts—faster and with greater confidence. We specialize in the front-end of product development.

Our platform captures and interprets human inputs—like sketches, feedback, trends, and market signals—and turns them into product concepts that are both creative and practical. It’s like giving every design team a strategic co-pilot: one that sees hidden patterns, connects the dots, and surfaces ideas worth pursuing.

Ada IQ is for teams who want to design smarter, faster, and with the consumer in mind from day one. This is product innovation—supercharged by AI and guided by human creativity.

Caid, https://www.linkedin.com/company/ca-id

At Caid, we’re redefining how digital meets the physical. Our AI tool transforms natural language into precise, adaptable computer-aided designs—enabling quick physical prototyping for industries, maker-spaces, and research and development laboratories. Conventional CAD tools can be laborious and time-intensive, frequently resulting in users having only a faint idea of their design. Caid fills that void by utilizing distinct human tacit knowledge and merging it with advanced machine intelligence, unleashing the potential of collaborative intelligence.

At the heart of our mission is the belief that human experience, intuition, and creativity—when collaborating with Caid—can achieve results neither could alone. Join us in reshaping the physical design landscape to anyone, anywhere.

Coworked, https://coworked.ai

Coworked is transforming project management by pioneering AI solutions that empower teams to achieve more with less effort. Our flagship product, Harmony, is the most comprehensive AI Project Manager coworker designed to take on PM tasks, enabling project managers to focus on strategic leadership and innovation. Built on a proprietary agentic AI framework, Harmony integrates seamlessly with popular project management and communication tools, operating as an autonomous team member. With a mission to make enterprise change as seamless as day-to-day operations, Coworked is dedicated to enhancing project efficiency, reducing costs, and helping organizations realize the full potential of their project management capabilities.

Gigabug Computer, https://gigabug.org

We research and develop novel physics-based computer architectures to address the ever-increasing energy demand for AI workloads. We aim to have the first commercially available integrated circuit to accelerate adoption and push algorithm development for this emerging technology. Our product is an AI accelerator that can easily interface with modern classical computers, offering an ultra-low-power drop-in replacement. By utilizing physics as a natural compute resource, we can unlock several orders of magnitude improvements in energy consumption and runtime over classical digital processors (CPUs/GPUs/FPGAs). Our device will target combinatorial optimization and generative machine learning problems, which are at the forefront of all major commercial industries.

Kathalyst, https://www.kathalyst.ai

Kathalyst is an AI-powered platform that eliminates the biggest barrier to modernization—understanding legacy systems. Our technology automates documentation, system visualization, and semantic code conversion, giving companies a clear roadmap to transition away from outdated software. Instead of relying on expensive consultants or risky, manual rewrites, enterprises can now reduce costs, mitigate risks, and confidently upgrade to modern technology with a structured, automated approach. By making legacy software modernization faster, more reliable, and scalable, Kathalyst is redefining how enterprises future-proof their technology.

Neoclease, https://www.neoclease.ai/

Neoclease builds new nucleases as genetic medicines, each individually designed to target a specific gene. Our differentiated approach is enabled by our generative AI model and evaluation pipeline, trained on millions of known nucleases, overcoming today’s barriers to gene editing. We engineer safer, more precise, and efficient genetic medicines. We’re currently validating our first nucleases for Parkinson’s disease with an approach that could be the first therapeutic to slow or fully halt progression of the disease.

Neoclease’s platform is scalable across multiple diseases, creating a new class of gene editors tailored for precise, disease-specific interventions. Our AI-driven pipeline allows for rapid development of novel gene therapies, addressing previously untreatable conditions. With applications spanning neurology, rare diseases, and oncology, we are building the foundation for the next generation of genetic medicines.

Parrots AI, https://www.flyparrots.com/

Parrots is an AI-powered platform revolutionizing Alzheimer’s care through real-time cognitive monitoring, early detection, and personalized caregiver support. Today, over 55 million people globally live with Alzheimer’s and related dementias, yet current care models rely on infrequent clinical assessments, generic therapies, and overwhelmed caregivers—resulting in delayed interventions, unnecessary hospitalizations, and rising costs.

Parrots transforms this model by using multimodal AI to analyze speech patterns, cognitive engagement, behavior, and wearable data to detect subtle signs of cognitive decline. Our platform delivers daily, personalized cognitive exercises and provides real-time alerts and insights to caregivers and clinicians through intuitive dashboards. This enables early, proactive care decisions and reduces the burden on families and the healthcare system.

Rayo, https://therayo.com

Rayo is an empathetic AI platform transforming digital accessibility by seamlessly bridging user empowerment and business compliance, unlocking a $13T global disability market. Today, 98% of websites remain inaccessible, excluding 400M+ people from jobs, education, and essential services. Current solutions—clunky plugins, slow audits, or niche tools—fail to address both user needs and enterprise compliance.

Rayo changes this with context-aware AI that dynamically adapts digital experiences in real-time. For users, Rayo personalizes interfaces: simplifying layouts, enabling voice/gesture controls, and guiding complex tasks—empowering those with visual, physical, or cognitive disabilities to navigate independently. For businesses, our AI auto-fixes compliance gaps (e g , alt-text, keyboard navigation), generates audit reports, and mitigates legal risks while tapping into an underserved market.

Tangify Corporation, https://tangify.co/

Corporate legal departments already run lean. Now they’re under pressure to cut headcount and still do more with less. Patent programs are especially painful to manage. They require specialized expertise to spot what’s actually patentable, and depend on coordination with senior leaders to make IP decisions. The process of identifying inventions is slow and manual: engineers have to fill out forms, sit through trainings, and attend regular discussions with IP specialists.

Tangify is an agentic AI platform that helps corporate legal teams scale patent discovery – without adding headcount. The platform plugs into existing inventor workflows and reads documents they’re already producing, like engineering specs, meeting notes, jira tickets, marketing whitepapers, etc. It then automatically finds and surfaces overlooked inventions; adds clear, relevant analysis for every invention; supports rapid decision-making; instantly generates supporting patent documentation; and turns scattered technical insights into actionable IP assets at scale.

The Ostrea Cultura Co., https://ostreacultura.com/

Misinformation is a threat to online platforms. It harms users, turns off partners, and exposes platforms to significant regulatory risks. However, there is no way to automatically detect misinformation in real-world contexts. That’s why we, a misinformation researcher and one of the architects of Birdwatch, put our heads together to come up with a solution. We solve the problem by combining human expertise, traditional machine learning, and generative AI into a set of core services for platforms to address misinformation, around misinformation policy, detection, and interventions on platforms ranging from social media to web hosting and parental control. We tap into experts and open-source repositories of misinformation to create a database of false claims. We then use human intelligence and generative AI to create a model that checks any text against this database.

Xtory, www.xtory.ai

Clinical decision-making in the emergency department (ED) is complex, time-sensitive, and prone to errors, leading to poor outcomes, and unnecessary costs ($3.4 B / year in waste). More than 50% of ED visits result in $ loss to hospitals across the U.S. Improving clinical decision-making in the ED leads to increased operational efficiency, optimized workflows, better patient care, and lower healthcare costs.

Xtory is building an AI-powered clinical decision support platform that combines large medical language models with predictive neural networks to help ED clinicians make accurate and timely decisions – our technology enhances clinical judgment while ensuring protocol compliance, improving patient outcomes, and reducing healthcare costs.

yc0n1c, (We are in stealth mode, but can demo the website at anytime.)

Imagine an AI driven, permissionless world where startups don’t chase or pitch for capital—they earn it via validated traction. Where that traction—not talk—unlocks resources. That’s yc0n1c, the global operating system for venture capital and scalable startups—a decentralized infrastructure where every startup is powered by proof, not speculation. Our core is powered by AI-based decision making (yc0n1c), innovative smart contract technology, unified tokenomics and DAO validators. yc0n1c is a living, breathing, on-chain ecosystem where founders, investors, builders, and validators co-create value through programmable smart contract incentives, transparent governance, and an unstoppable feedback loop of traction and trust.

New Videos: Review the FEI25 Collective Intelligence Startup Competition Finalists

Why Collective Intelligence?

Collective intelligence arises from the fusion of human and machine intelligence for results neither could achieve alone. FEI 2025 showcases seed-stage startups that leverage uniquely human tacit knowledge within their AI solutions. By understanding how these new AI offerings are shaped by human experience and intuition, organizations can unlock the power of collective intelligence.

Startups are judged on:

  • Prominent Feature of Human Intelligence as an input
  • Impact and relevance to cross-industry corporates
  • Level of dependence on external ecosystem
  • Disruptiveness/Degree of Difficulty
  • Degree of technical feasibility
  • Customer Desire-ability
  • Business viability

The judges for the 2025 FEI Seed Stage Startup Competition include Keith Crossland, CEO & Co-Founder at Carbon Negative Solutions; Carley Hart, Director of Corporate Partnerships, Runway Startups at Cornell Tech; Andre Magni, Data & AI Leader at Microsoft; Arvind Balasundaram, Executive Director, Commercial Insights & Analytics at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals; Leslie Shannon, Head of Trend and Innovation Scouting at Nokia; Rachel Levy, AI Innovation Engineering Lead at Google; and June Dershewitz, Co-Founder at InvestInData.

FEI 2025 will be held May 19-21, 2025, Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport Boston. Click here for more registration information.