The AI Experiment: How Corporate Innovation Will Change in 2025

When Scott Kirsner — CEO and Co-founder of InnoLead — experiments with something, it’s never halfway.

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At the end of 2024, he set out to answer a bold question: What happens when you hand over the keys to your content process and let AI drive? Not just the writing, but the voices, the summaries, the packaging, and even the soundtrack.

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This wasn’t a hypothetical. Scott and his team actually did it . Using tools like ChatGPT, Suno, Google’s NotebookLM, and ElevenLabs to produce a fully AI-assisted content experience.

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Their goal wasn’t to hype the tools or replace themselves. It was to explore what these technologies can really do — where they help, where they fall short, and how they’re reshaping the future of innovation work.

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“Could we use AI not just to assist with creative work,” Scott asked, “but to help shape, package, and even perform it?”

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The Voice Cloning Was Wildly Convincing

Scott and his colleague Alex Slawsby cloned their own voices using ElevenLabs, a voice AI platform that takes around two hours of speech to build a convincing vocal model. The results were uncanny.

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“It sounds like a member of the Slawsby family,” Scott quipped, “but not exactly like [Alex].”

Even more impressive, the AI-generated voices could speak in multiple languages — Spanish, German, Japanese, Portuguese — with no extra effort. “We can now speak in an infinite number of languages,” Scott said, half-joking but also kind of serious.

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It opened up interesting questions about how teams might scale communication across global audiences without ballooning production costs.

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Then: ChatGPT Summarized a Year of Innovation Content into 5 Trends

The team fed ChatGPT all kinds of source material: research reports, keynote decks, LinkedIn Live takeaways, even live assessments. The goal was to compress the year’s thinking into five key insights to guide innovation in 2025.

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Here’s what the AI delivered — with Scott’s team double-checking and adjusting along the way.

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1. AI is Becoming the New Workplace Ally

AI adoption is accelerating, but it’s not plug-and-play. Around 40% of companies say they expect major AI integration within three years — primarily for internal operations. But many are still navigating concerns around ROI, ethics, and impact. The challenge is to move past hype and focus on meaningful, responsible applications that boost efficiency without compromising security or trust.

2. Innovation Is Breaking Out of the Silo

Nearly half of companies are trying to decentralize innovation — making it everyone’s job.

There’s a growing emphasis on giving employees across departments the tools and permission to experiment. That’s exciting, but there’s a caveat: decentralization needs structure. Without a core team to coordinate and support efforts, you risk diffusion without direction.

3. Metrics Matter More Than Ever

Innovation teams are under pressure to prove they’re driving results. And fast. Only about 25% say most of their recent projects produced measurable outcomes. Leadership wants to see alignment between innovation efforts and strategic priorities — especially when budgets tighten. Clear KPIs and C-suite backing are no longer “nice to have” — they’re make-or-break.

4. Progress Demands Partnership

Gone are the days of innovating in isolation. More companies are forging partnerships — with startups, universities, even competitors — to co-create solutions. Collaborations like these bring fresh perspectives and reduce the risks of going solo. If there’s a mantra for 2025, it might be: innovate together, or fall behind.

5. A Shift Toward the Core

With economic uncertainty still in the air, many companies are focusing less on futuristic moonshots and more on short-term, high-impact innovation. That means improving operations, solving current customer pain points, and driving value now. Long-term vision matters, but in 2025, pragmatism is taking the wheel.

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The Blind Spots

What didn’t make ChatGPT’s top five, but arguably should have? While the AI got a lot right, Scott highlighted two blind spots.

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First: the need for consistency and structure.

“There’s been a lot of float, drift, change — whatever you want to call it — in corporate innovation,” he said. “You don’t go to Panera and get two different chicken soup recipes. Innovation teams need to commit to a clear, shared process.”

He pointed to the new ISO 56000 standard for innovation management as a promising framework — one that might bring some much-needed alignment to the space.

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Second: change management as a critical skill.

‍Innovation is change. If your team isn’t prepared to sell change internally — to influence, persuade, and build alignment — the best ideas won’t stick. It’s no longer enough to be a creative thinker. You have to be a strategic communicator too.

They Even Wrote a Song About It

Yes, really. One of the more playful parts of the experiment involved Suno, a music-generating AI.

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Scott took Felipe Negritto’s article — “Marketing Became Indispensable to Corporations. Can Innovation Follow Suit?” — and asked ChatGPT to turn it into song lyrics.

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Then he uploaded the lyrics into Suno, selected the style “Prince funky pop,” and generated 28 different musical versions.

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“ChatGPT’s first version had some very awkward rhymes,” Scott admitted. “But with a few tweaks and better prompts, it got closer to something catchy.”

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It was a fun (and surprisingly insightful) exercise in repackaging thought leadership into a new format. The point wasn’t to make a hit — it was to explore how generative tools can extend the reach of great content.

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One Final Tool: Google’s NotebookLM

The last leg of the experiment used NotebookLM, Google’s AI-powered research assistant built on Gemini. Scott uploaded one of their most-read articles of the year — “5 Techniques to Get Aligned — and Stay Aligned — with your C-Suite” by Rachel Antalek — and asked NotebookLM to generate a short, AI-generated audio conversation summarizing it.

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The result was surprisingly good.

“You used NotebookLM to get, what, 80% there,” said Alex. “Without the time, money, or frustration of traditional content production.”

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But not everything was rosy.

Scott noticed that the male AI voice dominated the conversation, while the female voice played more of a sidekick role — mostly agreeing and elaborating.

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“I don’t know if it was a conscious choice,” Scott said. “But I’d love to see the makeup of the Google team that built this. It feels like a design decision worth examining.”

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It’s a small thing, maybe. But for anyone thinking about how AI shapes communication, influence, and inclusion — it’s not insignificant.

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So, What Should Innovation Leaders Take Away?

This wasn’t a polished marketing play. It was a raw, real-world experiment — and that’s what makes it worth paying attention to.

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“There’s still no substitute for human judgment, storytelling, and taste,” Scott reflected. “But these tools can give you a major head start.”

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In other words: AI won’t replace your innovation team. But it will change how fast you can move, how broadly you can communicate, and how creatively you can experiment.

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Don’t wait for these tools to become perfect. Start testing, adapting, and learning now — because the innovators who move first will have the biggest edge.

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‍How nexxworks helps companies stay future-focused

At nexxworks, we create experiences that help companies think, act, and prepare for what’s next.

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✅ We take leadership teams into the most innovative business environments.

✅ We challenge companies to step out of daily operations and into future-focused thinking.

✅ We help organizations shift from reactive problem-solving to proactive opportunity-building.

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Let’s design a custom tour where you’ll connect directly with the experts driving change.

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