---
id: "action-incubate-via-crowdsourcing"
type: "action-item"
source_timestamps: ["§ Incubate-Pilot-Scale"]
tags: ["innovation", "ideation"]
related: ["org-sap", "framework-ai-deployment-process"]
action: "Run internal innovation challenges to crowdsource practical AI use cases and prompts from employees."
outcome: "Generates a high volume of practical, ground-level AI applications and fosters organizational buy-in."
sources: ["commercial"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-commercial"
originDay: 5
articleStem: "hbr-foci-64-ai-broaden-customer-base"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2025/03/how-one-company-used-ai-to-broaden-its-customer-base"
sourceTitle: "How One Company Used AI to Broaden Its Customer Base"
---
# Incubate AI Ideas Internally

**Action:** Run **internal innovation challenges** to source AI use cases from the broader workforce. [[org-sap|SAP]] opened a challenge to **25,000 employees over two years**, resulting in **hundreds of practical ideas** and a **playbook of over 1,250 categorized GPT prompts**.

**Expected outcome:** A high volume of practical, ground-level AI applications *and* organizational buy-in (which mitigates the culture risk in [[claim-culture-is-the-game]]).

This is the "Incubate" portion of step 3 (**Incubate-Pilot-Scale**) of the [[framework-ai-deployment-process]].