MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How AI Changes Partner Collaboration

Explore six steps for using AI with external partners in new ways to drive product and business model innovations.

In a time of constant change and evolving customer expectations, the ability to innovate quickly is no longer an option but a strategic necessity. Innovation is driven by creativity — the ability to envision solutions that are novel and useful — and many companies are finding that they come up with breakthrough ideas more effectively and rapidly by working with partners outside of their own organizations.

We are seeing a degree of partnering among organizations, including competitors, as never before. And we are seeing artificial intelligence unlock unprecedented levels of creativity, not just in what these partnerships produce but in how these businesses collaborate.

Our research — including our books Artificial Intelligence for Business Creativity (edited by Pagani with Renaud Champion) and All-In on AI (written by Davenport and Nitin Mittal) — examines how companies are using AI, both generative and analytical, as a catalyst for new ways to work together. These companies are going beyond using AI in ways we might now think of as typical, such as gaining deeper insights from data analysis, automating routine tasks, and accurately forecasting trends. Drawing on an analysis of over a thousand AI systems in practical application, as well as in-depth discussions with industry leaders, below we highlight AI’s pivotal role in fostering novel collaborations and driving organizational transformation.

About the Author

Margherita Pagani is a full professor of human-centered artificial intelligence and digital marketing and director of the Skema Center for Artificial Intelligence at Skema Business School. Her book Transformative Artificial Intelligence: Advances for Ecology, Health and Education will be released in 2025 by Edward Elgar Publishing. Thomas H. Davenport (@tdav) is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, the Bodily Bicentennial Professor in Analytics at the UVA Darden School of Business, a fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and senior adviser to the Deloitte Chief Data and Analytics Officer Program. His latest book is All Hands on Tech: The AI-Powered Citizen Revolution (Wiley, 2024).

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