10080244Deploying a co-creative AI tool to accelerate high-growth companiesClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKOxentia Ltd is a specialist innovation management consultancy. We work with corporate, university and government clients to support their innovation. This could include working with companies of all sizes to grow, through, for example, developing their business models, understanding their customers and potential markets, or building their capacity and capability to innovate. However, the provision of expert consultancy is, because of a reliance on expert staff, often expensive and therefore out of reach to many early stage companies and busy, cash-poor SMEs. Artifical Intelligence (AI) tools hold the promise of being able to deliver expert advice in a more cost effective way, at scale. However, existing 'off the shelf' AI tools such as ChatGPT are poorly tailored to spcialist applications such as innovation management, and without significant expert input, risk creating poor quality outputs. This project, in collaboration with Bayes Business School (part of City, University of London) aims to test the feasibility of Business Sparks. Business Sparks is a new interactive digital tool aimed at cutting the time it takes to develop business strategies and advice for clients. Unlike existing tools such as AI-driven chatbots, it combines curated expertise with AI reasoning. Business Sparks explicitly guides users to explore ideas, develop different approaches, and discover larger numbers of more innovative business insights for SME clients. We will test the feasibility of the tool to impact our business through two use cases. The first focusses on an existing start-up client, and aims to test to utility of Business Sparks to allow us to quickly tailor our expert advice to high growth start-ups and SMEs, thus allowing us to scale our support of UK-based high-growth companies. The second use case focusses on allowing us to efficiently develop and tailor our extensive training material to client needs, offering our high quality, bespoke training at a lower cost. Due to the number of start-ups and SMEs and their significant contribution to the UK economy,if successful, this tool could t boost economic growth and increase productivity, for both consultancies using the tool, and for the high-growth companies that benefit from more cost-effective yet expert advice. It could lead to more equitable and accessible advice, which could benefit social mobility and inclusion.