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How Valcon Evaluates How AI Ready You Are
Peter Juel Jensen
August 13, 2024
Pioneer AI: Checking the Nordic AI Pulse
Welcome to Pioneer AI’s newsletter, The Nordic AI Pulse.
We are a Nordics-focused AI investment fund.
We track, share, and analyse information and insights on Nordic-related AI news, deals, and trends.
📚 In This Issue:
Valcon Evaluations Your AI Readiness
Nordic AI Funding News
Podcast Insights
Upcoming: Nordic AI Events You Shouldn't Miss
Valcon Evaluations Your AI Readiness
Jade Haayen and Aneja Orlić have created a framework for evaluating how AI-ready companies are. Using reveals recurring blind spots – and potential market opportunities for AI startups.
Could you briefly introduce your company, yourselves and your AI-related work?
We work at Valcon, a digital transformation consultancy. We both have a technical background with experience in AI, machine learning, and data. This is the starting point for collaborating with companies to unlock significant business value through the strategic use of AI..
We have developed a unique framework that that guides businesses in transforming and optimizing their organization using Data & AI solutions. This framework is designed to address key challenges and provide actionable insights, enabling organisations to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage in the digital age.
Could you describe the framework?
It builds on considerations and metrics such as business culture, internal AI understanding, available in-house skills, data availability and quality, IT infrastructure, and the software solution stack. This includes assessing the desired speed of change, AI solution integration possibilities, and actual transformation ability.
The starting point is always strategic business goals and how AI might align with them. Only in cases of alignment do we consider how a data-driven and AI-focused approach may help achieve them.
What recurring findings and trends have you encountered when using the framework?
One recurring trend we’ve observed when using our framework is the varying interpretations of what AI truly entails. There can be misalignments between employees, technical departments, and leadership. Each is vital to getting the best out of AI, but that requires a common understanding of what AI is, AI’s potential and limitations and what implementing AI solutions mean.
You could partly blame generative AI solutions for the misalignment. Their speed and ease of use have set high expectations, leading some to believe that all AI solutions are simple and quick to deploy. However, the reality is that most AI solutions—especially those that drive significant long-term value—are far from plug-and-play, you often have a situation where leadership expects quick implementation and benefits; employees are worried about AI taking their jobs next week; technical staff want clear technical specifications and worry about deployment speeds.
What do you advise in such situations?
One strategy is to implement AI rollouts and employee literacy in stages.
Companies also need to consider the speed of new AI developments and how to future-proof AI solutions by making them flexible and adaptable.
GPTs were pretty terrible at most tasks just two years ago compared to today; this is a good indication of how fast things are developing.
What major AI trends and developments must people and companies consider?
AI governance is probably one of the biggest upcoming trends for companies. Its impact will be on AI what GDPR was on data handling and processing.
AI is also going to become normalised in many contexts, and soon we’ll regard it much like a button we press to accomplish a task or a tool, like Word, which we use daily without thinking about how it works.
AI will simplify complex work, letting us work smarter and enabling humans to do what we do best, including thinking and building creatively and collaboratively.
What about the situation for startups and innovation? For example, do you see new opportunities for startups?
One change is a lower bar for innovation, both for established companies and startups. AI can significantly reduce the time required for tasks like developing coding solutions and automating industry-specific processes, making innovation more accessible.
Data quality will be the focus in all contexts. While this was a priority during the Big Data era, it is now even more critical in the context of AI. Many companies may find themselves unprepared due to uncertainties around data quality, data collection processes, and related issues—challenges that can be quite unsettling. Simply put, AI cannot thrive without a solid data foundation.
Despite these challenges, we see immense potential for AI tools and the emergence of new AI startups, particularly in areas focused on enhancing data quality and optimizing data-driven processes.
What do you think? Any comments or thoughts? Let us know via email or contact us on the Pioneer AI LinkedIn page here.
🚀AI Funding News🚀
Select Nordic AI-related deals, investments, acquisitions and insights.
Congratulations to all of the founders and teams!
Pioneer AI’s top Nordic AI funding insights and highlights:
1: No AI summer holiday here!
New AI investments continue at a high pace across the Nordic countries, showing no signs of a summer slowdown. The robust performance indicates that many of the region's AI companies are successfully gaining market shares and attracting investor interest. The potential and value offered by Nordic AI innovations remain high. Finding the right investment partner to take you to the next level should be at the top of AI company founders' and teams' minds.
2: Big rounds for impressive companies
Kvantify raised €10 million, and Leya raised $25 million. Both are among the biggest rounds of 2024. This signifies a maturing market and underscores how Nordic AI companies with the right initial backing and support are now demonstrating that their business models and scalability are sustainable, and thereby attracting substantial investor confidence.
3: No code? No problem!
Several Nordic AI startups offering no-code platforms have raised recent rounds. However, the magic is in the details. For example, Lemonado’s approach is to help customers build business software that automates work and streamlines business processes. This vertical focus on specific solutions and/or industry spaces is proving to be the secret sauce for AI companies, especially those in the early phases of development.
🎧Listen To🎧
Nordic AI news and analysis for your ears.
AI Denmark Podcast [DK] - Hear answers to the question, How has AI changed our societies and lives by 2034?
Kunstig Intelligens [NO] - Is AI a threat to national security? And how can it be used in attacks on national states in the Nordic region?
AI Sweden Podcast [SE] - Should every Nordic student have their own AI tutor?
📅Training, Meetups & Conferences📅
Conferences
August 20-23: Robophilosophy Conference 2024: Social robots with AI: prospects, risks, and responsible methods. [Aarhus, Denmark]
October 14-18: Process Mining Conference 2024: Industry and scientific conference on process mining. [Copenhagen, Denmark]
October 18: IMA AI Conference: The 50th International Management Assistants Conference will examine the state of the industry and potential disruptions by AI. [Stockholm, Sweden]
October 21-22: Nordic AI Meet: Symposium early-career AI researchers to network, collaborate, exchange ideas, and form a Nordic approach to building AI solutions for the societal good. [Helsinki, Finland]
October 21-23: D3A: The Danish Digitalization, Data Science and AI brings together a diverse audience to explore the latest trends and research in AI. [Nyborg, Denmark]
Meetups
Do you know an event, meetup or similar that you think should be on the list? Let me know!
Got an AI story or insight from the Nordics? Share it with me!
Reply to this email or connect on LinkedIn.
Until next time,
Pioneer Venture AI,