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Business·G Space·Evidence-backed gain·Published 2026-07-20

Artificial intelligence and innovation management: Charting the evolving landscape

The excitement surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) is palpable. It is rapidly gaining prevalence in academia, business, and personal use. In particular, the emergence of generative AI, exemplified by large language models such as ChatGPT, has been marked by substantial media attention, discourse, and hype. Like most, if not all, aspects of business, innovation processes have been impacted. However, little is known about the degree of impact or the benefits that might be gained. To cut through the hype and u…

TRV-2026-0388Peer-reviewedPermanent record — cite & verify
Artificial intelligence and innovation management: Charting the evolving landscape

"Data Innovation Day 2014" by datainnovation is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.

The quick read

In mid-2024, researchers reported results from a large-scale survey and follow-up interviews of innovation managers in the USA to assess how AI is actually used in innovation. They found adoption is high and widespread, with AI applied in more than half of surveyed firms' innovation projects and concentrated in the development stage rather than idea or commercialization stages.

The distinction matters for business productivity because it shifts attention from ideation hype to development work where firms are already deploying tools, and it surfaces a perceived workforce benefit around job fulfillment for generative AI. What remains uncertain is whether perceived benefits translate into measured innovation performance, given the US-only manager sample and limited prior evidence on impact magnitude.

Main points
  • Large-scale survey plus interviews of innovation managers in the USA found AI used in more than half of firms' innovation projects.
  • Usage was higher in the development stage than in idea or commercialization stages, countering discourse focused on idea stage.
  • Study compared generative AI versus traditional AI and examined links to innovation performance and perceived benefits.
Gain

Innovation managers reported generative AI is more likely than traditional AI to make employees' jobs more fulfilling when used in firms' innovation projects.

The rundown

The study was motivated by hype around generative AI such as ChatGPT and a lack of empirical evidence on practical use in business innovation.

Authors report AI is used more in the development stage than in idea or commercialization stages and note differences in expected benefits between generative and traditional AI.

Sources

Reader signal

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The debate