GenAI: Rethinking Innovation, Organization and Advantage

Ananya Sheth
5 days ago
10 min read

with Michael Jacobides, Armel Djeukou, and Tucker Marion at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ - March 19-20, 2026

This symposium's objective is to develop an evidence-based understanding of how generative AI, as a general-purpose technology, is reshaping innovation processes, organizational design, and value creation.

SUMMARY

This meeting brings together academic experts and senior industry leaders to develop an evidence-based understanding of how generative AI, as a general-purpose technology, is reshaping innovation processes, organizational design, and value creation. Through research-driven presentations, real-world cases (including Zillow, Moderna, and Airbus), and interactive exercises, the meeting examines where GenAI creates genuine innovation value—and where it introduces new risks, false confidence, or organizational bottlenecks. The program emphasizes the “hard innovation” requirements of GenAI adoption, including data foundations, governance, decision quality, and changes to workflows, rather than treating AI as a standalone tool. Participants engage in company-specific breakouts and hands-on experimentation to map GenAI use cases, stress-test assumptions, and identify practical implementation pathways within their own organizations. Overall, the meeting aims to move beyond hype toward actionable insights on how firms can responsibly integrate GenAI into innovation systems to build sustainable competitive advantage.

BACKGROUND

Over the last several years, the consortium has explored evidence-based research[1] focused on the challenges of successfully implementing higher-risk transformational innovations. Topics included the challenges of scaling transformational innovations, applying rigorous hypothesis testing and experimentation, understanding the challenges of implementing an ambidextrous organization, best practices for team formation, decision making under high uncertainty, and how to make better portfolio decisions on high-risk innovation projects.

The upcoming consortium symposium will focus on the intersection of generative AI (GenAI) and innovation. While the consortium has traditionally examined how organizations succeed in high-risk, transformational innovation, this symposium will focus on innovation more broadly, as there is very little evidence-based work that explicitly examines the role of GenAI in such innovation.

GenAI is recognized as General-Purpose Technology. General Purpose Technologies are foundational technologies that broadly reshape entire industries, activities, and ways of working across almost all sectors. They have three defining characteristics:

Pervasiveness: They can be used across a wide range of industries and functions.

Continuous Improvement: The technology keeps improving and getting cheaper over time.

Innovation Enabling: It enables other innovations to enhance their own delivery.

Other General Purpose Technologies include the steam engine, electricity, the internal combustion engine, computing, semiconductors, and the internet. As such, GenAI will have a profound impact on innovation.

The emerging applications of General Purpose Technologies are inherently difficult to predict because their most important breakthroughs emerge over time and often from unexpected parts of a broad learning network. When the transistor was invented in 1947, few could have anticipated the microprocessor, personal computing, or today’s highly specialized chips optimized for deep learning. These advances did not follow a linear path, but arose from dispersed experimentation across universities, startups, suppliers, and users—each building knowledge through use. Crucially, those who engaged early accumulated learning advantages that later proved decisive, not because they could foresee the end state, but because early experimentation positioned them to recognize and exploit emerging opportunities. GenAI is unfolding in much the same way. Firms that view GenAI narrowly through the lens of what it can do today—rather than actively learning from experiments unfolding across startups, alliances, and adjacent ecosystems—risk missing the most significant innovation breakthroughs that will define its long-term impact.

Given the breadth, complexity, and evolving nature of GenAI, we view this consortium meeting as the first step in an ongoing series of conversations. To shape the discussion, we used a network-based approach to identify and invite experts positioned at key nodes of the learning ecosystem—individuals likely to surface early insights and diverse perspectives. As understanding deepens and new questions emerge, we fully expect to broaden our focus to different nodes of the learning network, exploring different dimensions of GenAI and their implications for innovation.

In my search for domain experts for this meeting, we focused on researchers conducting deep, evidence-based research with an emphasis on innovation. Our first speaker, Michael Jacobides, who is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the London Business School, is a leading authority on how new technologies reshape innovation, industry architecture, and competitive advantage. His research focuses on ecosystems, platforms, modularity, and the distribution of value—precisely the questions raised by GenAI as a general-purpose technology. Drawing on extensive work with both established firms and high-growth technology companies, he has shown how shifts in technology alter where innovation occurs, who captures value, and how organizations must adapt their strategies and boundaries. Professor Jacobides brings a uniquely rigorous and practical perspective on how GenAI will reorganize innovation networks and redefine the sources of long-term advantage. I was particularly impressed by his broad, evidence-based perspective at a meeting I attended in Copenhagen in 2025. A similar presentation can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZJ7io5sI1M . Further, he has authored two exceptional studies[2] on the impact of GenAI, both available on the meeting website. The combination of his distinguished record of high-level research, as evidenced by his publications in top academic journals, his presentation in Copenhagen, and the two yet-to-be-published articles in GenAI convinced me that he was one of the key thought leaders in understanding GenAI.

Michael has invited Armel Djeukou, Senior Vice President at Airbus, to participate in his session virtually to share a practitioner’s perspective on implementing GenAI at scale within a large organization. Drawing on Airbus’s digital transformation journey, he will discuss how foundational changes in data, systems, and organizational design were a prerequisite for effectively deploying AI tools. His experience highlights the “hard innovation” aspects of GenAI—such as digital twins, information redesign, and breaking down siloed development structures—that enabled significant gains in productivity and development speed. His perspective will help ground our discussion in the practical realities of translating GenAI from promising tools into measurable innovation outcomes.

The second domain expert, Tucker Marion, who is an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, is a leading authority on innovation and new product development. He is a co-author of The Innovation Navigator, a widely used and highly regarded framework for guiding firms through the complexities of innovation strategy, portfolio design, and execution. His more recent work[3] extends this core innovation lens to examine how GenAI reshapes innovation processes, decision-making, and creative collaboration. Rather than treating AI as a standalone technology, Tucker situates it within the broader innovation system, exploring how human and machine capabilities can be combined to improve innovation outcomes. This evolution of his work makes him especially well positioned to help us understand how GenAI fits into—and transforms—the practice of innovation.

[1] Evidence-based research refers to the systematic use of the best available data, rigorous analysis, and critical evaluation of assumptions to inform conclusions and decisions, rather than relying on intuition, tradition, or anecdote. As such, the consortium focuses on consultants who have published in top-tier peer-reviewed journals.

[2] Jacobides, Michael, and M. Dalbert Ma. ”How Disruptive Will Generative AI Be? A Micro-Level Analysis of Evidence and Expectations.” Working paper. Evolution LTD, 2025.

Jacobides, Michael, “Results Over Rhetoric: A Hands-On Ecosystem Guide for the AI Era, Working Paper, Evolution LTD, 2025.

[3] Piller, Frank T., Mahdi Srour, and Tucker J. Marion. "Generative AI, innovation, and trust." The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 60.4 (2024): 613-622.

Marion, Tucker J., Mahdi Srour, and Frank Piller. "When Generative AI meets product development." MIT Sloan Management Review 66.1 (2024): 14-15.

Marion, Tucker, Chelsea Yuan, and Mohsen Moghaddam. "Integrating AI into the Front End of New Product Development: A Case Comparison of Traditional and Augmented Processes." Research-Technology Management 68.2 (2025): 10-22.

Michael Jacobides - Sir Donald Gordon Professor of Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Strategy, London Business School; Visiting Professor and Senior Fellow, The Wharton School; Lead Advisor, Evolution Ltd.

Michael passionately believes that research and engagement in strategy and policy should go hand in hand. He examines how firms should navigate the increasingly complex and digitized environment: where and why value migrates, how they can best capture it, and how they should respond to the dramatic growth of business ecosystems.

His main areas of interest are digital platforms and ecosystems, financial services, and turnarounds. He explores where and why value migrates, how firms can best capture it and how they should respond to the dramatic growth of business ecosystems. His work on digital platforms and ecosystems has led to deeper engagement with firms and consultants. It has also brought him closer to today’s big policy questions, and he has started engaging with digital regulators too. He is the faculty lead in the joint FT-LBS executive course on AI strategy, which will start in 2026, and has appeared in industry and company meetings, including WEF's Davos, the AI Summit, and TEDx.

He has explored the evolution of the financial services sector, and since 2015 has been a Visiting Scholar at the New York Fed, the regulator of US banks. His research has examined value migration, firm and industry boundaries, and organizational design.

He has also worked on turnarounds and change, having built one of LBS’s most popular electives and written many cases. He is a Co-Editor of Industrial and Corporate Change, a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge, and a Visiting Scholar at the New York Fed.

His work appears in the top academic journals, including the Strategic Management Journal and Strategy Science (where his papers on ecosystems and AI are some of their most-read), as well as Organization Science, Research Policy, Academy of Management Journal, and Industrial and Corporate Change, where he is a co-Editor. He also publishes in Harvard Business Review, California Management Review (where he won the 2023 Best Paper of the Year Award), Forbes, Fortune, and the Financial Times.

He also shares his views with a broader audience than academics, having penned OpEds for Kathimerini, the Financial Times, El País, and Huffington Post, and blogged for HBR.org and Forbes.com.

He has recently been recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top 50 management thinkers and a finalist for their Strategy Award. He is also a regular speaker at events such as the Global Drucker Forum and WEF meetings.

He enjoys working on real-life problems. He is the founder and Lead Advisor of Evolution Ltd, an advisory boutique focused on leveraging the AI disruption and digital ecosystems. He is also an Academic Advisor to Boston Consulting Group, working with the leadership of the Global Advantage Practice and the BCG Henderson Institute on their thought leadership. He has collaborated with McKinsey & Co, IDEO, Keystone Strategy, the European Centre for Strategic Innovation, and PwC and Accenture.

He sits on the Ventures Board of Founders Lane. He also sits on the advisory board of exciting new businesses such as Traipse in Washington, in Toronto, and Wappier in Athens, and has worked with iconic CEOs such as Haier’s Zhang Ruimin. He has facilitated senior meetings for firms including Helvetia, Burberry, DeBeers, EnelX, MasMovil, YLE and Merck Serono, in settings from Helsinki to Dubai.

He is also the Chief Expert Advisor on the Digital Economy for the Hellenic Competition Commission and a Visiting Scholar at the New York Fed, as he believes research should not only help businesses but also regulators and society at large.

His life is more than work- - there are other causes he supports – anywhere from the Hellenic Society for the Preservation of Culture and the Environment (where he serves as a Strategy Advisor), to the Network for Children’s Rights, to KEOS Culture, an NGO focusing on his adoptive island of Kea, to a museum in a small village in the refugee-hosting island of Lesvos (which, parochially enough, celebrates his great-grandfather, painter Georgios Jakobides). He is also a big fan of his wife’s work, as Beth works to instill a sense of excitement and discovery, as well as a foundation for science in young kids.

Armel Djeukou - Senior Vice President, Digital & Transformation | Head of Digital Products Ecosystem | Former Head of Group Digital Transformation (DDMS), Airbus

Armel is a senior technology executive and board member with over 20 years of global leadership experience in the aerospace ecosystem. He brings a deep perspective to the intersection of digital strategy and industrial reality, focusing on how advanced technologies can be translated into tangible, long-term value.

At Airbus, Armel holds enterprise-wide responsibility for the Group's digital strategy and transformation. He orchestrated the multi-billion Euro Digital Design, Manufacturing & Services program, a critical initiative that has redefined how the company designs, manufactures, and operates aircraft. By scaling Digital Twins and AI across a workforce of 70,000 employees and a global supply chain, he has successfully delivered significant efficiency gains and embedded a "Digital-First" operating model that was instrumental in accelerating the ramp-up of the A320/A321 programs and the development of new aerospace products.

His expertise lies in navigating high-stakes transformations and "hard innovation": the complex integration of data, systems, organizational, and cultural design required to deploy technologies effectively in large-scale manufacturing environments. Prior to his current role, Armel served as VP Programs and Services and Head of the UAS (Drones) Business Unit at Airbus Defense and Space, where he managed a €0.5bn P&L and led full portfolio strategies for major programs, including the Airbus High-Altitude Long-Endurance Pseudo Satellites Drone Platform (HAPS) Zephyr.

Armel holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), with a focus on advanced lightweight structural mechanics, and an MSc in Aerospace Engineering from RWTH Aachen University. He is Harvard-trained in M&A and a Chief Digital Officer certified from MIT.

Beyond his technical and operational leadership, Armel is passionate about unleashing the potential of people and ecosystems through genuine human connection. He is a dedicated Diversity Advocate, serving as a sponsor for the Airbus People of Color Community. Additionally, he is the Co-Founder of SEEDS e.V., where he mentors international entrepreneurs to foster African entrepreneurship.

Tucker Marion - Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business and jointly appointed in the College of Engineering, Faculty Director for Northeastern’s Master’s in Product Management programs

Dr. Marion’s work focuses on how organizations can harness technology and processes to improve innovation performance. His interdisciplinary research explores integrating artificial intelligence, digital design, and startup methods into the new product development (NPD) process. He studies how these emerging tools reshape collaboration, creativity, and decision-making across engineering and management domains. His recent work investigates generative AI’s role in design, metrics for measuring innovation effectiveness, and the convergence of human and machine creativity.

Dr. Marion teaches courses on innovation, product design, and entrepreneurship at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels, including Lean Design and Development and Emerging and Disruptive Technologies. He has led executive programs for global organizations across industries, from healthcare to energy. He served as the founding Faculty Director of Northeastern’s Master’s in Management platform and the Master’s in Innovation program. He served as the Partnership Innovation Director for D’Amore-McKim School of Business and Chair of the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group.

In addition to his academic roles, Dr. Marion is a 3X co-founder. These include co-founding Ada IQ, a generative AI company that integrates customer data and large language models into product design and evaluation. He collaborates widely with industry and government partners, including NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Dr. Marion has published extensively across leading management and engineering outlets, including the Journal of Product Innovation Management, the Journal of Business Venturing, Design Science, Design Studies, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Harvard Business Review. He is co-author of The Innovation Navigator (University of Toronto Press), with an expanded edition, The Innovation Navigator: Transforming Your Organization in the Era of AI, published in fall 2025.

Dr. Marion holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, an M.S. in Technology Management from the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Bucknell University.

Meeting content (To be updated)

Pre-readings (Podcasts)