Innovation success or failure always comes back to outcome-driven collaboration

Despite a dominant AI narrative in most 2024 business conversations, it’s collaboration that always stands out in the stories of positive outcomes. That collaboration must be based around shared outcomes—a mission. It sounds trivial, but enterprise leaders constantly come back to the failings and successes of their ecosystem collaboration—inside and outside their organizations.

HFS Research recently attended the 2024 Infosys EMEA Confluence billed as “Enterprise AI, Growth, and You.” There was a welcome wealth of clients telling their own success stories on stage and throughout our networking efforts. Listen to any of these enterprise leaders, and their ecosystem is the major success factor or barrier.

A concrete collaborative call-to-action is for enterprise leaders to push their partners to bring their partner ecosystem to the collaboration—maximizing shared learning and spheres of influence.

HFS has long espoused the virtues of our OneOffice and OneEcosystem approaches, where silos are broken down between business teams as well as throughout networks of supply chains, partners, expertise, and regulation (see Exhibit 1).

Exhibit 1: The role of data, OneOffice, and OneEcosystem in how GenAI will impact the enterprise beyond productivity

Source: HFS Research, 2024

Our separate report assesses the need for balance between innovation for growth and efficiency—and the frequent shortcomings of collaboration between enterprise teams focused on the now and future, where links to business teams, goals, and roadmaps are lacking.

Collaboration success and failure transcend industry walls

To begin weaving together a series of enterprise stories from Confluence, a large industrial energy CIO told us: “We’re using AI for product creation—but AI is also a new [energy consuming] customer for us. We’re now talking to hyperscalers as suppliers and customers. Our partnerships are becoming stronger.”

As a utilities CDO illustrated: “Our district heating and smart meter rollout and scale-up mean collaboration is essential for us throughout the ecosystem between cities, developers, and education. We can’t do everything and need policy help, but we’re best placed to lead that collaboration when the public sector is so strained for money and time.”

A CTO of a global telco further outlined: “You always think you can do it better. But capex and opex require a super clear view on where you can excel and where your partners are best placed to bring their contributions.”

Also from the telco industry, a data and AI leader explained one initiative: “We brought our ecosystem of brands across our geographies together to be greater than sum of its parts—focusing on outcomes as our teams and partners co-create and scale on sustainable platforms, bringing capabilities from business operations, engineering, IT, analysts, technology developers, and thought leadership partners.” They outlined how the customer operations team, for example, was part of the collaboration from day one—they see the complaints and pain points and can help create an agentic or call center solution, including by writing scripts and adoption playbooks that have all-in-all saving one minute per call. Agent experience has also improved—they’re enjoying the tool. Notably, the firm’s CEO runs the overarching ecosystem collaboration—there’s clear buy-in from the top. That buy-in and ecosystem collaboration combined helps mitigate risk inside and outside the company.

Collaboration will also help to derisk regulatory complexities—such as the EU AI Act

The EU, at its best, embodies collaboration and a mission. Similarly, its landmark AI Act is based on use cases—perhaps the first major technology act to focus on more on outcomes and less on the technology itself. In navigating the AI Act and any regulation, shared mission between partners becomes critical.

Trust and transparency will be a differentiator in Europe

— General Counsel, a global conglomerate

The CTO from the same conglomerate said: “AI regulation varies by jurisdiction—we built a compliance layer so that one powerful tool can service all markets at the same time as enabling collaboration across borders.”

Another general counsel, this time from a technology firm, continued the collaboration theme with the proverbial IT-business disconnect: “Involve your lawyers early. IT and law don’t speak the same language. Align around shared outcomes. Identify the use cases that make a difference for your customers and organizations. Map those against the EU AI Act, your own risk assessment methodologies, and governance solutions. Find help with governance if you can’t do it yourself. Technical teams can point out where legal wording is either undefined or unclear. Both sides can translate legislation to each other. We’re not here to constrain you and want to see you run as fast as you can with AI within the guardrails.”

AI is even “generating” collaboration

The utilities CDO is using GenAI to consider how different perspectives inside and outside of the company would react to different technology opportunities. But far more importantly, they outlined the potential energy savings of “baking” a potato in an air fryer versus an oven (over 90% it turns out!).

The Bottom Line: Collaboration is easy to say and easier to get wrong, especially for emerging technologies such as GenAI. Your collaborations must be aligned and mission-driven.

Collaboration can’t afford to remain a buzzword—it’s the linchpin of successful GenAI implementation and all innovation. Enterprise leaders must redefine their collaboration by integrating cross-functional teams, demanding ecosystem accountability, and embedding compliance frameworks such as the EU AI Act into their strategies. Begin by mapping ecosystem interdependencies and prioritizing initiatives that deliver measurable outcomes. Your success starts with the partnerships you forge today.