Where can AI take your entrepreneurial ideas? An expert shares insights
More about Red Bull Basement
Alex, why did AMD feel that a partnership with Red Bull Basement would be a good fit?
Our vision at AMD is to build great products that accelerate next-generation computing experiences. We believe at the same time that to achieve real progress takes groundbreaking innovation and also human ingenuity. It’s all about people getting together and creating something exceptional and pushing the envelope, which is exactly what happens at Red Bull Basement, right? We’re all in for it.
It’s all about people getting together and creating something exceptional and pushing the envelope, which is exactly what happens at Red Bull Basement
One of the challenges in getting an idea considered – let alone funded – is creating a business plan. Can AI kickstart a business plan, or help to shape one?
For sure it can. Creating a solid business plan is a pretty tough task, usually requiring extensive research, modelling (especially the profitability matrix), revenue streams; and also knowing your potential markets and customers. So using AI, and chatbots, for that matter, can help save a lot of time on simply searching or summarizing information. The usual basic productivity tasks.
Using AI can help save time when creating a business plan
© Javier Iguacel Peña/Red Bull Content Pool
What other kinds of productivity tasks can AI take on?
AI can also help to generate creative ideas, for initially something as simple as the baseline presentation designs to also then product features, and, depending on the product, maybe even to product definition and the prototype. This all can elevate the business plan to a whole other level. You can also use AI to try some of the ideas and try to figure out what might be driving some customers and users.
In the end, it would then be up to the would-be entrepreneurs to decide what works for them, because there are just so many things you can potentially do.
If someone is unfamiliar with using AI, how should they approach using it?
Precisely because there are so many things you can do, I would encourage everyone just to be creative and try things out for themselves. In the AI field in general, the different types of applications and what’s possible are all so fast paced that by the time people read this interview, there might be things available which are not available now as we’re talking. And when it comes specifically to the Red Bull Basement partnership with AMD and Microsoft, participants heading to the World Final will have the opportunity to be powered by industry-leading CPU and GPU technologies in the laptops and in the cloud. So just try it out, see how it works. Get this experience into developing a business plan or developing a project, and try to make it as best as possible.
On a larger scale, would you say that AI can play a role in inspiring and advancing human creativity generally?
I believe so. I see it as another tool to use for extra inspiration. Many creative people get their inspiration from a variety of things. If you write a book, you might get inspiration from music, people, theatre performances, nature around you… So because the amount of new content and ideas to explore with AI is nearly endless, we might actually see an endless opportunity for new ideas and motivation.
And to get back to the creativity involved for an entrepreneurial idea, generative AI might be a very interesting tool to try to see how the end result might look before investing your time on a particular project. Using AI as an extra helper, you can try things like combining different styles and techniques at the brainstorming phase, before getting to the final product, and that can potentially reduce time to market significantly. So you have yourself, you have colleagues or collaborators, and you have AI, and you can use all of this to advance creativity. I think it’s a beautiful thing.
Teams listen to a speaker at the 2022 Red Bull Basement final in Istanbul
© Nuri Yılmazer/Red Bull Content Pool
What would you hope AI can help the Red Bull Basement participants to achieve?
If I would pick one thing, it would be getting to the right idea as fast as possible, an idea that (a) you believe in as an innovator and (b) is unique. AI can help, for example, to check the uniqueness of the idea, even simply by scanning the web for as many different data sources as possible.
And I would also hope that maybe they use the tools to give them the opportunity to be as agile as possible, because especially in the early phases, that’s something you really need. Sticking with an approach that doesn’t quite work might be detrimental to the project. You want to be agile, you want to pivot – as long as it makes sense, as long as it brings more customers, revenue, whatever the target. Having an idea, and having a bunch of ideas, is great. But in the end, execution is everything.