In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, staying competitive means embracing innovation. One technology that has gained immense popularity is ChatGPT. ChatGPT is known for its ability to generate human-like text and answer questions and is mostly used as a chatbot. However, I found out that it can also be a valuable tool for generating creative business ideas.
Last year I had an assignment about corporate venturing. For this assignment, I was asked to analyze a corporate venture of a big company and to come up with an improvement plan. As big companies have employees working full-time on improving corporate ventures to help the company grow, I knew it would be a difficult task to come up with a unique plan that was not done before and was financially beneficial for the company.
After searching the internet I found that Nike had a corporate venture that failed recently and could be an interesting case to analyze. Nike’s failed corporate venture was Nike’s Adventure Club, a subscription service offering children’s footwear. After analyzing the case for the assignment, I asked ChatGPT how Nike could have managed Nike’s Adventure Club better. It came with many answers and after asking further even with a new business idea. I thought coming up with an idea would be difficult but ChatGPT came up with a unique plan that was not done before and could really be financially beneficial for the company, Nike Athlete Club, a subscription service offering athletes footwear. ChatGPT saw the weak spots of Nike Adventure Club and came up with a business plan that I think could genuinely be a good idea for Nike to pursue.
As a consequence of this, I came to the realization that ChatGPT should be used way more by companies to create creative business ideas. It took ChatGPT 10 seconds to create a legitimate creative business idea, with the strengths and weaknesses of its own idea, while employees of these companies are more expensive and not as quick. McKinsey already stated that “Current generative AI and other technologies have the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time today” (McKinsey, 2023). Of course, companies and people will have to get used to ChatGPT and learn how to use it, but I do believe it is only a matter of time before ChatGPT will be the new way to create new business plans.
