Exploring entrepreneurship and innovation in an age of AI

Designing a human-centred tomorrow in the face of artificial intelligence (AI) was the theme of discussion at this year’s Innovating for Impact, the annual symposium hosted by Bayes Business School in collaboration with CityVentures and City St George’s Institute for Creativity and AI.

Now in its fifth year, the event reflects the mission of the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice (C2P2), which aims to build a global community of creative thinkers and practitioners working to lead positive change. The Centre seeks to inspire and enable new generations of creative leaders to critically reflect on complex modern challenges and to carry these approaches into organisations and teams.

Bringing together students, academics, entrepreneurs and practitioners from the creative industries, the half-day event aimed to explore pertinent challenges and opportunities facing the innovation landscape.

Following welcomes from Dr Sara Jones, Director of the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice and Professor Alessandro Giudici, Head of the Faculty of Management at Bayes, this year’s event was split into two concurrent streams running in parallel with a student hackathon.

Stream One, supported by the Institute for Creativity and AI, explored how AI is being implemented into work systems to enhance rather than replace human creation and productivity. Hosted by Dr Nettra Pan, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Bayes, speakers presented ways they were using language learning models to free up capacity for higher-priority, more strategic tasks. Speakers included Dr Qin Han, Senior Design Researcher and Lead R&D at Stby, Beth Richards, Senior Business Engagement & Knowledge Exchange Officer at City St George’s, and Simon Liss, an creative industries consultant, who likened the role of AI to “doing the washing up” in its capability to take on operative tasks and free up creative energy.

Stream Two, led by CityVentures, saw a panel discussion around AI’s barriers and opportunities for startups, chaired by Stephen Miller, a strategy consultant. Panellists Meghan Stevenson-Krausz, CEO of Diversity VC, Shervin Mashayekh, Senior Product Manager, and Simon Sällström, Founder of Stealth Startup, shared insights into AI’s potential to unlock wider networks and more diversity in funding allocation. The panel also spoke about the impact of AI on company roles as tasks shift.

Delegates in this stream also teamed up to share ideas on how AI could be used to improve support for diverse communities of entrepreneurs, while limiting biases in its approach.

At the same time, three groups of students from City St George’s and other institutions participated in an afternoon hackathon designed by Bayes alumni who work in innovation teams at BT and Deloitte. . Students were tasked with coming up with ways of helping charities demonstrate the impact of their work to funders through digital platforms. Seema Patel, Head of Grant Programmes and Strategy at London charity The Childhood Trust set the real-world challenge. Using generative AI tools, the challenge pitted entrepreneurship against intrapreneurship, as team of intrapreneurs with greater resources but also greater constraints came up against entrepreneur counterparts. In less than four hours the winning team built an impressive replica of a Bloomberg terminal display that charities could use for reporting.

Dr Jones said the event once again sparked topical conversations and even friendly competition among delegates.

“The Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice aims to build a global community of creative thinkers and practitioners to inspire positive change. Innovating for Impact is our flagship event, providing a platform for creative leaders, students and academic thinkers to come together and share perspectives on the latest key developments affecting global entrepreneurship and innovation.

“This year we looked at the impact AI is having on human roles in the workplace and on investment. Thanks go to all speakers and guests for their valuable contributions to the session, and for sharing an array of ideas on how to embed systems into workplace operations.”

Find out more about the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice at Bayes Business School.

Read more about the Technology & Innovation Research Group at Bayes.