AI Workshop, Culture Update Outthinker Strategy Network Roundtable
Agenda | September 28, 2023
| Time | Activity |
| 9:00am-9:30am | Check-in and breakfast |
| 9:30am-11:30am | AI Workshop and discussion |
| 11:30am-1:00pm | Afternoon check-in and networking lunch |
| 1:00pm-1:10pm | Welcome and Introduction to Ozgecan Kocak and Renee Dye | Framing their research and ideas in the context of a corporate strategy and innovation executive. |
| 1:10pm-1:30pm | CSO participant introductions and top questions about quantifying culture and using it as a competitive advantage |
| 1:30pm-3:00pm | Thought leader presentation and CSO group discussion and dialogue |
| 3:00pm-3:30pm | Coffee Break, group networking, and 1:1 connection concierge introductions and meetings |
| 3:30pm-5:00pm | Thought leader follow up remarks and discussion continuation/evolution |
| 5:00pm-5:20pm | Key takeaways and close |
| 5:20pm-6:00pm | Networking Reception |
*Final agenda TBD, exact times subject to change
AI Workshop: Leveraging Generative AI for Strategic Advantage
Most individuals and organizations have begun to explore the benefits of generative AI on a case-by-case basis: marketers are using ChatGPT to develop thought leadership and developers are harnessing AI to write code. But organization-wide, strategy and innovation leaders are grasping at generative AI on a greater scale.
This workshop will explore, questions such as:
- How can we prompt generative AI models to generate novel strategic options and perspectives beyond our normal cognitive biases?
- How can we broadly train employees on appropriate prompt engineering?
- What are the latest real-world examples of organizations using AI for competitive intelligence, scenario planning, visioning exercises and other strategy workflows?
- What governance is required for responsibly leveraging AI and how do we avoid issues such as bias, plagiarism, and factual inaccuracies?
We will convene with practitioners and advisors to discuss how companies are approaching and disrupting by leveraging the power of Generative AI.
Culture Update Roundtable: Refreshing our Thinking on Aligning Culture to Strategy
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” When Peter Drucker purportedly uttered these words, he drew attention to the fact that no strategy – no matter how grounded or precise or accurate – can succeed if it conflicts with a company’s culture. Whether we aim to facilitate communication between units, encourage innovation, or create an inclusive climate, we all appreciate the fundamental importance of culture to the success of our plans. We also accept that any significant strategy redesign should be followed by an effort to align our cultural values with the strategic priorities on which our organization’s future depends.
But what if this assumed approach to cultural alignment is actually, in many cases, false? Recent research puts several broadly accepted assumptions on the topic into question:
- Does cultural change have to take a long time, or can it be affected more rapidly?
- Should cultural change efforts focus on shared values or focus on socializing members into a set of norms?
- Should we pursue cultural alignment or are there instances when cultural diversity should be preferred?
- Should we align culture to strategy, or should we rethink its relationship with strategy?
In this session, Professors Özgecan Koçak of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School will share some of the latest research and practical examples so we can better understand the intricate dynamics between organizational culture and strategy. We will explore why norms may be more powerful tools for cultural change than values, why and when cultural diversity may be preferred, and how to incorporate culture into the formulation of strategy. Ultimately, we hope that by updating our understanding of cultural change, we can all become more effective at affecting strategy transformation.
Özgecan Koçak
Associate Professor of Organization & Management
Özgecan Koçak
Özgecan Koçak (pronounced as ohz-gay-john ko-chuck) is associate professor of Organization & Management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. She holds a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2017, Koçak held positions at Columbia Business School and Sabancı University (in Istanbul, Turkey). Her research in the fields of organization theory and strategy explore how shared understandings (such as communication codes, categorization systems, and identity schema) emerge and shape behavior in organizations and markets. Her work has been published in American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Journal of Organization Design, Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Strategy and Organization, and Strategy Science.
