How AI Is Changing the Way We Approach Innovation

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AI, Innovation and the Imagineer Mindset

AI is giving us permission to think beyond what we already know.

For most of my career, there has been a natural limit on what I could build or create: what I knew how to do.

I could have a great idea, but eventually I would run into a wall. I do not know how to write that code. I do not know enough about that technology. I do not know how to build the model. I do not know enough about that industry.

At that point, the idea needed someone else with the right expertise, but more often it simply remained an idea.

I suspect most of us have a list like that. Ideas we thought about for a minute and then set aside. A better way to run a process. A tool that would make our customers’ lives easier. A report nobody has built because nobody quite knew how. Those ideas were not bad. They just ran out of road at the edge of what we knew. AI is changing that for me.

I think it should change the way we approach innovation.

Disney has a great word for the people who turn its ideas into reality: Imagineers. The idea combines imagination with engineering. Imagine what could be possible and then figure out how to make it happen.

What I appreciate about that idea is the order of operations. Imagineers do not start with the tools they have and ask what they can do with them; they start with what they want someone to experience and then work backward to figure out how to build it. The vision comes first, then the engineering follows.

That is increasingly how I think we should approach AI.

Start With “What If?”

Too much of the conversation around AI is still about efficiency. How can AI write this email faster? Summarize this document? Create this presentation? Save me 30 minutes on a task?

Those are good uses, and I use AI for them too. But we are missing the bigger opportunity if all we do is use AI to perform the work we already know how to do a little faster.

What if we used it to attempt things we do not know how to do?

What if I have an idea for an application but I am not a developer? What if I see a problem in a business process but do not know the technology needed to solve it? What if I have an idea for a new service, analysis or product but there are pieces of it well outside my expertise?

In the past, those gaps were barriers. Today, they can become conversations.

I can ask AI to help me understand the problem. I can learn about technologies I have never used. I can explore different approaches. I can have it challenge my thinking. I can prototype something, discover why it does not work, fix it and try again.

Imagination Becomes the Starting Point

I still need judgment. I still need expertise. And sometimes I absolutely need someone who knows the subject better than I do. But “I do not know how” does not have to mean “I cannot.”

Instead of beginning with “What do I know how to do?” we can begin with “What am I trying to accomplish?” Then use AI to help bridge the gap between the two.

Dream a little bigger. Ask “what if?” more often. Do not let what you do not know be the reason you dismiss a good idea.

Imagine what could be. Explore the path. Build something real.

Embrace your inner Imagineer.

Where Imagination Meets Expertise

Big ideas still need people who know how to build.

Imagineers have never worked alone. Behind every idea that made it off the sketchpad was a team of engineers, designers and builders who knew how to make it work, make it safe and make it last.

The same is true in business.

AI can take an idea a remarkable distance. It can help you explore it, test it and build a first version faster than ever before. But there is still a gap between a promising prototype and something an organization can depend on. That gap is filled with questions about data, security, controls, systems and the people who will actually use it.

That is where experience matters most.

At Frazier & Deeter, this is the work we love. Our clients bring us the idea. Sometimes it is a clear vision. Sometimes it is just a frustration and a feeling there has to be a better way. Together, we figure out what is possible, what is practical and how to get there with the right technology, the right safeguards and the right expertise.

Big ideas become reality when imagination is paired with people who know how to build.

So bring us your “what if?”

Let’s imagine it, explore it and build it together.

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