Entrepreneurial AI in the Enterprise: LG Nova's Shilpa Prasad

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Sam Ransbotham** (0:59)
How can an entrepreneur in residence kickstart new AI-based businesses in a large, incumbent organization? Find out on today's episode.

**Shilpa Prasad** (1:09)
I'm Shilpa Prasad from LG Nova, and you're listening to Me, Myself, and AI.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:16)
Welcome to Me, Myself, and AI, a podcast on artificial intelligence and business. Each episode, we introduce you to someone innovating with AI.
I'm Sam Ransbotham, Professor of Analytics at Boston College. I'm also the AI and Business Strategy guest editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (1:35)
And I'm Shervin Khodabandeh, senior partner with BCG, and one of the leaders of our AI business. Together, MIT Smr and BCG have been researching and publishing on AI since 2017, interviewing hundreds of practitioners and surveying thousands of companies on what it takes to build and to deploy and scale AI capabilities and really transform the way organizations operate.
Hello, everyone. Today, Sam and I are excited to be joined by Shilpa Prasad, entrepreneur in residence at LG Nova. Hi, Shilpa. Welcome to the show.

**Shilpa Prasad** (2:10)
Thank you, Shervin. Excited to be here.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (2:13)
Tell us about LG Nova and your role there.

**Shilpa Prasad** (2:16)
I get asked this a lot.
LG Nova is the innovation center of LG Electronics based here in Silicon Valley. Our mandate is very simple. We're tasked with finding new business opportunities for LG Electronics that is not core to their bread-and-butter business. LG Electronics is a consumer electronics manufacturer, traditionally looking to make forays into solution-driven businesses, and so constantly identifying new technologies and areas that can be interesting for them to build upon.
And hopefully launch billion-dollar businesses out of it. That's what LG Nova is. My role at LG Nova is entrepreneur in residence. And what that entails is I have many different hats that I wear, one of them being plain consultant for the corporation. And by consultant, I don't mean traditional consulting, but more in the context of what are some of the trends to look out for, what new technology areas could be interesting, how can we combine a multitude of technologies maybe for a business opportunity. That's one part of it. The second part of it is very much focused on outside innovation. Roots are set in the fact that we don't want to do what somebody else has already done. And startups are a great example of how quickly they innovate. And we want to bring that innovation into the enterprise that we are and leverage some of that capability to chart out a path together. So collaboration with startups is key.
And that's where the entrepreneur side of me kicks in, where you've got to be able to understand the mindset of the entrepreneur, the speed at which they function, what drives them, what makes them do the stuff that they do, and convey that to the corporation in an effective way. And then, of course, there's a reverse role, right? Where the entrepreneurs don't necessarily, outside of the corporation, understand the workings of the big corporation. And how do you bridge that gap, I think, is very, very crucial to the role. It sounds very simple, but there is a lot of balls in the air in that sense, and you've got to be able to juggle all of that at the same time while keeping your eyes on the goal of building new business.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (4:37)
You're talking about a large global multi-billion dollar company that's operating at a given speed, and you also want this group to operate at a much faster, I would assume, entrepreneurial speed. So I could imagine why it's juggling a lot of balls. I wanted to ask you, is it identification of these technologies or innovation, opportunities, disruptors, or is it in addition incubation and building of these as well?

**Shilpa Prasad** (5:06)
Yeah, so there is the ideation piece, but there is also the venture building piece. And part of venture building is incubation. So you have maybe like six months to identify an opportunity, build towards something, and then demonstrate that capability both on the product side, on the business side, to senior stakeholders and investors wherever necessary, and then drive that to new business.