Successful entrepreneurship and innovation have always required a deep understanding of the needs, wants and goals of target customers. Traditionally, obtaining this knowledge has been time and resource intensive, but the emergence of artificial intelligence it's changing the game. Using AI tools, entrepreneurs can now analyze customer data at scale, extract valuable insights and make data-driven decisions.

I am a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College, where I teach future-focused courses on AI and entrepreneurship and lead AI Lab. While some in business believe AI is overhyped, the dawning age of AI will be a revolution for entrepreneurs – and my students – looking to explore, understand and exploit business opportunities.

Artificial intelligence can accelerate human creativity and curiosity, helping entrepreneurs uncover insights into what customers want and value. My research, work in industry, and teaching at the nexus of AI and innovation show that AI capabilities will grow in importance. That is why.

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Using the superpowers of AI to scale knowledge

One of AI's superpowers is synthesizing large amounts of data and empathize with customers more deeply – quickly.

Tools like Lundr.ai can transcribe focus group sessions or customer interviews in seconds, allowing entrepreneurs to quickly identify unmet needs, pain points and value drivers. Sentiment analysis APIs such as those provided by Microsoft Azure it can detect emotional cues and tones in customer conversations that people might miss. By accumulating this data over time, entrepreneurs can gain a deeper understanding of how customers feel about their brand, product or service. This is knowledge at scale.

AI can also help entrepreneurs tap into the voice of the customer at scale. Customer feedback from various sources such as social media, product reviews and customer support tickets can be automatically collected and analyzed using tools such as Meaning Cloud. By setting up automated workflows using platforms like Zapier, entrepreneurs can streamline the process of collecting and analyzing customer feedback, enabling them to identify recurring issues and opportunities for improvement and innovation.

AI can also help quickly iterate on value propositions, such as for a website or important customer presentations. Tools like Claudie can help entrepreneurs quickly generate variations of their messages based on customer feedback. These variations can then be imported into platforms like Copy.ai to create compelling product descriptions that resonate with a target audience. By constantly refining their messaging based on customer input, entrepreneurs can arrive at a much more efficient winning value proposition.

Customizing the customer experience

Real-world examples demonstrate the power of AI in understanding and engaging customers. One of my best undergraduate students at Babson, Chloe Samaha, founded BOND, a virtual water cooler app for remote and hybrid teams. The main purpose of the application is to support culture building, employee satisfaction and employee retention among distributed teams.

Her company uses the latest version of OpenAI ChatGPT to generate personalized, culture-specific daily questions – answered by everyone – that drive engagement and retention among employees. By analyzing engagement data, BOND continuously improves its AI model to deliver engaging content tailored to each company. Without ChatGPT, this level of customization would be impossible at scale. The results speak for themselves: BOND has facilitated over 20 million peer-to-peer moments of connection and achieved an impressive 300% year-over-year revenue growth, highlighting the potential of AI to personalize experiences that resonate with users and drive business success. BOND takes and leverages the knowledge generation capabilities of AI.

As AI continues to evolve, its potential applications for entrepreneurship are limitless, especially for rapid prototyping of entrepreneurial ideas. ChaptGPT's ever-improving ability to support text-to-code enables non-coders to prototype their software ideas simply by describing them to an AI. And those who already know how to code can now do so five to 10 times faster.

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In ours AI Lab at Babson, we are designing new approaches to prototyping where students can 3D print a new product concept “extracted” from a 2D text-to-image model, such as OpenAI's Dall-E or Midjourney. Soon, I expect, students will only have to describe a prototype they want to create, and AI tools will help quickly flesh out those ideas into a voice-to-prototype experience.

The barriers between the digital and physical worlds are breaking down and we are entering an era of AI-augmented creativity that will accelerate innovation and democratize entrepreneurship. I see advances, quarter after quarter, in all areas of AI.

To stay ahead of the curve, entrepreneurs must embrace AI as a tool to better understand their customers. By using the right AI tools and platforms, entrepreneurs can gain deep insights into customer needs, preferences and sentiments. Armed with this knowledge, they can make data-driven decisions, iterate faster, and ultimately build products and services that truly resonate with their customers. The future belongs to entrepreneurs who can harness the power of AI to build customer-centric businesses.