Your Corporate GenAI IP Moat: The New Battleground for Competitive Dominance
…prompting public models with proprietary data essentially “coaches” them, donating your organizational knowledge to strengthen the Intellectual Property of third-party systems universally.
We’re all familiar with powerful AI Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT, Claude, Gemini, and others that can assist with everything from coding to creative tasks. These incredibly capable public models represent a double-edged sword for companies. On the one hand, they provide powerful utilities to boost creativity, productivity, and innovation. However, they also pose an existential competitive threat that most businesses have yet to consider.
The AI Commoditization Risk
As public AI helpers become ubiquitous resources available to your company and competitors, their neutralizing effect on competitive advantages intensifies. When everyone sources insights from the same generalized AI wells, the benefits afforded gradually become homogenous. What’s perhaps even more disconcerting — prompting public models with proprietary data essentially “coaches” them, donating your organizational knowledge to strengthen the Intellectual Property of third-party systems universally.
The strategic risk of relying solely on commoditized AI is clear. In the long term, businesses cannot sustain defensibilities or expect to out-maneuver rivals sourcing the same AI utilities. Your Board Risk Committee needs to urgently include the risk of gradually eroding the sacred sources of differentiation that make your company unique.
Constructing the Corporate GenAI IP Moat
Proactive businesses, led by the Board Risk Committee, must develop new strategic separations and proprietary “AI IP Moats” to avoid gradual, mutually assured competitive stagnation.
THE KEY ELEMENTS OF YOUR GENAI IP Moat
Proprietary Large Language Models (LLMs)
You create a controlled, secure AI environment by investing in tailored LLMs customized to your organization’s data, products, services, and processes. These bespoke models provide material differentiation from those simply renting generalized, third-party models.
Proprietary Prompt Libraries as Foundational AI Intellectual Property
Even when eventually leveraging public model foundations, developing prompt assets encoding your institution’s intellectual property and domain expertise will be paramount. These prompt libraries represent a powerful new class of IP to extract unique value.
Companies establishing LLM customization capabilities and nurturing prompt engineering IP will realize AI’s full transformative potential while simultaneously constructing strategic moats that are renewably difficult for competitors to replicate.
2024 is an Inflection Point
This year is a pivotal inflection point regarding generative AI that will determine leaders and laggards. Those accelerating investments in 2024 to develop proprietary assets and launch core AI programs will control new battlegrounds of customer relevance.
Conversely, businesses idling with a “wait and see” approach or remaining tethered to commoditized AI may struggle to construct material advantages as generative AI disseminates. They risk being perpetually out-maneuvered by companies already controlling proprietary high ground.
Embrace the Corporate GenAI IP Moat Concept
The generational window to manifest generative AI-driven growth separations is open but won’t remain open. Now is the time to prioritize proprietary AI infrastructure to ensure you are independent of your competitor’s helpers.
It’s now clear that real-world disruption cycles are commencing. Businesses can choose to construct their Corporate AI IP Moat that allows them to outcompete or ignore the window of opportunity and inevitably be reduced to bystander status in their industries. You can build arguably the most formidable competitive weapons of the coming age with conviction and committed investment.
2024 represents the pivotal year for organizations to stake their generative futures through definitive actions toward their proprietary AI moats. Don’t let our lifetime’s most consequential technological shift arguably relegate your company to an also-ran status. Commence planning for your generative moat today before the window of opportunity closes.
About the author: Greg Twemlow, Founder of Future Skills Studio.
Greg Twemlow: Sharing what I’ve learned from my career of 35 years as a citizen of the world, parent, corporate executive, entrepreneur, and, since 2018, CEO of Future Skills Studio, focused on experiential learning programs for young people.
