The traditional enterprise, with its rigid structures and constrained decision-making, is increasingly ill-suited to adapt to the dynamic and unpredictable environment of a co-intelligence world of individuals as creative-experiencers involved in Human–AI interactive engagement and co-creation of risk-managed value. It calls for a symbiotic relationship between human flourishing and the socio-technical assemblages that we have formed collectively. Only through thoughtful, risk-managed co-intelligence value co-creation can we ensure that it empowers us, rather than extinguishes the very spark of humanity and life – experiences it seeks to amplify.
AI first needs to be seen as augmenting, and not just automating, human work. Davenport and Kirby note the promise of augmentation in their 2016 book, Only Humans Need Apply: “humans and computers combine their strengths to achieve more favourable outcomes than either could alone.” As Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu argues, the focus on automation over augmentation is a choice and not a predetermined outcome of technological advancement. With the appropriate economic and non-economic incentives, such as tax policies and research emphasis, the right type of AI may be developed that supports employment and shared prosperity.
Another important question that enterprises must ask themselves is what constitutes social responsibility in a business? They should find the right balance between a focus on maximising profits for shareholders, solving social problems and improving society as a whole. Marjorie Kelly, a leading theorist in next-generation organisational design, suggests a way for profit-maximising corporations to become living enterprises in a sustainable economy. She writes in The Systems View of Life (by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi): “You don’t start with the corporation and ask how to redesign it. You start with life, with human life and the life of the planet, and ask, how do we generate the conditions for life’s flourishing?”
As we have argued, we need a Life-Xverse first frame of reference in leveraging co-intelligence, one rooted in cocreating positive, valuable and emergent life–experiences with AI. Enterprises must co-design co-intelligence architectures steering organisational ecosystems with a life–experience orientation towards human and planetary wellbeing. This calls for a new form of enterprise in leading the co-intelligence revolution powered by AI factories of the future. Co-intelligence architectures must be configured to support offering, value chain, management and NEST ecosystems, with organisations themselves seen as assemblages through which interactive agency takes place. In addition to the technical architecture, this requires paying attention to the social architecture – the management structure, talent development, training, skills, beliefs, decision rights, performance metrics, rewards, and values of the organisation – to enable co-creative risk-managed value. Successful transformation rests on the co-creative capacities of organisational architectures to enable extended enterprise and open/social network-resourced capabilities to be harnessed effectively by the organisation.
We call this new form of enterprise a co-intelligent enterprise. Building on our discussion of organisational management transformation and risk management in this chapter, cointelligent enterprises are characterised by:
Harnessing Human–AI co-creation, leveraging tokens of digital intelligence (TDIs) through a risk-managed PIEX lens and co-innovating with stakeholders to build ecosystems of capabilities.
Designing organisations as living systems that continuously learn and adapt through “co-intelligence knowledge environments,” where TDIs act as modular units of actionable intelligence, enabling managers – viewed as creative-experiencers – to engage dynamically with Nextgen AI systems and co-creating risk-managed value across individuals, communities, functions and sectors.
Co-Evolving SWIs at speed, scale and scope across private, public and plural sectors, with TDIs dynamically orchestrating feedback loops that iteratively align actions with SWI goals and enhance systemic resilience.
Cultivating EcoAI literacy and lifelong learning, leveraging TDIs as actionable bridges to integrate Nextgen AI literacy with eco-literacy, addressing environmental and societal concerns ethically, thereby steering organisational ecosystems towards a harmonious world of human development and planetary wellbeing.
Excerpted with permission from The Co-Intelligence Revolution: How Humans and AI Co-Create New Value, Venkat Ramaswamy and Krishnan Narayanan, Penguin India.
