Earlier this month, Lewis James, Senior Data Scientist at Reach plc, joined students on the UCL School of Management’s Digital Strategy & Transformation module to share his deep insights and expertise into AI-led innovation within the fiercely competitive media and publishing industry. The Digital Strategy & Transformation module, led by Dr Rikke Duus, explores how organisations across industry sectors can adapt, evolve and transform to respond to ever-changing market dynamics, customer demands, technology innovation, and economic conditions.
Lewis James has extensive expertise in the field of digital and AI-led innovation, having designed, developed and launched multiple innovative solutions at Reach and other leading organisations, including in the insurance industry. In his talk, Lewis provided fascinating insight into the importance of adopting an entrepreneurial and experimental mindset when working with cutting-edge technologies, which drives opportunities for tech and AI-led innovation that can deliver new value for the organisation and its customers. Based on Lewis’ experience, students learnt about the importance of selecting appropriate use cases, for example optimising existing internal workflows, when setting out to develop and introduce new AI solutions that have the potential to deliver measurable business impact.
Not only did Lewis share insight into how organisations can organise themselves for AI-led innovation, he also shared a practical example of an AI tool that he has spearheaded at Reach, namely ‘Guten’. Guten is an innovate tool that supports journalists and editorial teams to optimise the writing and distribution of news articles across Reach plc’s more than 120 publications. Using Gen AI, traditional machine learning and software engineering, Guten has been designed to improve productivity and free up journalists’ time for more investigatory, field-based research; create a single and integrated workflow, removing manual work; integrate insight to action capabilities, and critically, increase speed for breaking news.
Upon sharing this exciting example of a real-world AI tool and its practical business impact, Lewis left students with important advice for developing AI solutions:
- Start with low solution complexity and iterate quickly to avoid the ‘cold start’ problem
- Choose an established workflow stakeholders want to transform
- Compete with 3rd party tools by being specific in the solution design and impact
- Ensure stakeholders’ incentives are aligned with the benefits of the innovation
- Measure success quantitatively
Ella Thompson, 2nd year IMB student, shared her main insight from Lewis’ talk:
“Lewis James’ guest talk as part of our Digital Strategy and Transformation module provided invaluable insights into how AI can be used to accelerate innovation and greatly impact an established industry, such as media and publishing. I was able to gain extensive insight into how AI, data, machine learning and more traditional software engineering methods can be used in innovative solutions that benefit not just customers but also organisations’ own employees, as is the case with Reach plc’s Guten AI tool that Lewis shared with us.
About Reach plc
Reach plc is the UK’s and Ireland’s largest commercial news publisher. Reach owns over 120 trusted brands, from national titles like the Mirror, Express, Daily Record and Daily Star, to local brands like MyLondon, BelfastLive and the Manchester Evening News, as well as US brands.
Every month, Reach’s publications reach 69% of the UK online population, seeking information on news, entertainment and sport.
