As we're currently seeing with AI, when a new technology becomes buzzy, companies will do almost anything to cram that tech into their products. Trends fade, however, and corporate priorities shift--resulting in bricked gadgets and buyer's remorse. That's what's happening to some who bought Oral-B toothbrushes with Amazon Alexa built in. Oral-B released the Guide for 230 in August 2020 but bricked the ability to set up or reconfigure Alexa on the product this February. As of this writing, the Guide is still available through a third-party Amazon seller.

The Sephora Studio offers the ultimate makeup experience--and more are opening in 2018. Amanda Li, 25, looked at herself in a mirror. She saw her own reflection, but with extra blush, extended eyelashes and a different lip color. As she blinked, her look suddenly changed, this time with a smoky eyeliner. The scene was part of Sephora's efforts called Virtual Artist, which debuted in 2016 and has gotten a makeover over time.

Artificial intelligence is one of the most powerful technologies for reshaping business in decades. It has the ability to optimize many processes throughout organizations and is already the engine behind some of the world's most valuable platform businesses. In our view AI will become a permanent aspect of the business landscape and AI capabilities need to be sustainable over time in order to develop and support potential new business models and capabilities. Specifically, we believe that companies need to establish dedicated organizational units to entrench AI. This is an important business tool that cannot be left to bottom-up whimsy.

Amazon is improving its Alexa voice assistant with each new update, enabling more natural conversation patterns and upgrading the system's ability to understand complex or vague questions. All of this is great for people who are sick of screaming, "ALEXA," and repeating commands a dozen different ways before the device actually does what it's supposed to. However, these upgrades are also good for advertisers -- and, by association, Amazon. Amazon hasn't laid out a clear, public plan for Alexa-enabled ads, but the company showed off the future of voice-assisted product placement during its event on Thursday. Head of all things Alexa, David Limp, explained that Amazon's voice assistant sometimes doesn't have the answer itself, but one of its skills (connected apps) might.

Olay, the popular skin care brand, started using AI to make recommendations to its millions of users almost two years ago, and says it has doubled the company's sales conversion rate overall. It's just the latest retail company that has turned to AI to boost its engagement with users to increase its top line. The traction confirms surveys that show an increasing number of businesses are putting AI investments at the head of their agenda. True, Olay has an advantage over most companies. The billion-dollar brand is owned by giant Procter & Gamble, and has been using AI in its core product for some time.

Information-technology executives at companies of all kinds in the Drucker Institute's Management Top 250 ranking of the most effectively managed U.S. companies have found ways to incorporate the best strategies from the technology sector to promote innovation, collaboration and new business models. IT executives at companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., WMT 0.01% Procter & Gamble PG -1.26% Co.--both among the 20 companies with the highest scores for innovation--and Capital One Financial Corp. COF 1.28% are taking on a more central role in the business, helping their companies adapt to the digital age. To that end, they're using cloud services and collaborative work models to speed up the development and delivery of technology, automating mundane work processes for employees and embracing cutting-edge technologies that add business value. "We're modeling ourselves off the best technology companies out there," says Rob Alexander, Capital One's chief information officer. "Not legacy tech companies, but companies that have been built in the era of the cloud and the internet."

Many of us have recalled the definition of insanity when experiencing frustration at work. After all, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result doesn't make any sense. This is one way to think about recent developments in Artificial Intelligence, or AI. It helps you get different, better results. Without getting technical, at best, in the past companies developed analytics based on assumptions and historical information.