Gen AI Innovation
Last week I ran another Generative AI Productivity Workshop for a group of inspiring ActionCoach Ignite clients in Kloof, Durban. One of the key takeaways for me wasn't anything I taught — it was the conversation sparked by a single case study: IKEA.
The IKEA Case Study
IKEA recently handed 57% of their customer conversations to an AI chatbot — the ones that could be handled effectively by AI. The instinct for most businesses at that point would be simple: great, now we can let those people go.
IKEA did something different.
They looked at the 43% of conversations the chatbot couldn't handle, and found that most of those customers weren't calling about returns or complaints. They were asking for interior design advice.
So instead of retrenchments, IKEA reskilled their customer service staff as paid interior design consultants. They built an entirely new business around expertise that had been sitting inside their contact centre the whole time — unrecognised and unmonetised.
Year one revenue from that new business: over €1 billion.
Make More of It
This is what Harvard Business School calls "Make More of It" — one of 55 proven business model patterns. Take a capability your business already has, one you're not currently selling, and build something around it.
AI doesn't replace the humans in that story. It frees them up to do something worth far more than what they were doing before.
Why This Matters More Here
For South Africa, this matters more than it does almost anywhere else. We cannot afford a version of AI adoption that simply displaces workers. Our unemployment rate means those decisions carry real human cost — families, communities, and a social contract that's already under strain.
And that's exactly what gives me genuine optimism about this work. Every business I work with has a version of IKEA's interior design consultants hiding somewhere inside it:
- A contact centre team that knows your customers better than anyone
- An operations team that has solved problems your competitors haven't
- A logistics function that has built knowledge no software can replicate yet
AI creates the space to find those people and ask a different question than "how do we cut costs?" It lets you ask: what else could you do?
The Companies That Will Win
The companies that come out ahead in this shift won't be the ones who automate fastest. They'll be the ones who combine automation with the courage to reskill, reimagine, and build new revenue streams from what they already have sitting inside their business.
That's the model I'm helping businesses build here in South Africa — one workshop, one team, one conversation at a time.