Innovation Management Watch Summary: “To Drive Innovation with GenAI, Start by Questioning Your Assumptions” by BCG

Boston Consulting Group’s March 2024 article explores how generative AI can contribute to innovation in a way that goes beyond faster brainstorming. While GenAI is widely seen as a tool for generating more ideas, BCG argues that its more valuable role may come earlier in the innovation process by helping organizations challenge the assumptions behind their existing strategies. The article suggests that innovation should not begin only with solution generation. It should begin by examining whether the assumptions shaping the business, its markets, and its priorities still reflect reality.   

Questioning Assumptions Before Ideation 

A key idea in the article is the importance of the “doubt phase” of innovation. BCG explains that many organizations innovate inside an existing “box” made up of assumptions about customers, technologies, competitors, and sources of advantage. When teams move directly into ideation without first testing that box, they risk becoming more efficient at solving the wrong problem. The authors argue that innovation teams should first identify the assumptions behind their current strategy, pressure test them, and decide which still hold, which are weakening, and which need to change. This process helps define a “new box” that is better aligned with changing realities and can give innovation efforts more urgency and focus.   

The Role of GenAI in the Doubt Phase 

BCG sees GenAI as especially useful in this part of the process because it can provide an outsider’s perspective. Unlike human teams, it is not as constrained by organizational habits, internal politics, or emotional attachment to legacy ways of thinking. The article notes that GenAI can help surface hidden assumptions, make connections teams may have missed, and even offer unusual suggestions that prompt leaders to rethink long-standing beliefs. BCG also points out that even off-the-wall outputs can be helpful if they force a team to pause, reflect, and consider alternative views before rejecting them.   

Generating and Refining Ideas 

The article also discusses GenAI’s role in the more familiar stages of innovation. In the divergence phase, GenAI can help organizations widen the funnel by producing more ideas, suggesting analogies from other industries, and offering both incremental and unconventional possibilities. BCG cites its 2023 global innovation survey, noting that organizations that benefited from using AI in innovation generated five times more ideas than those that reported no benefit. However, the article also makes clear that idea volume alone does not create advantage. Teams still need to shape and differentiate ideas using their own expertise, capabilities, and strategic priorities.   

In the convergence phase, GenAI can help teams narrow options by evaluating ideas in terms of desirability, viability, and feasibility. It can also support concept refinement, create draft pitches or visualizations, and act as a devil’s advocate by exposing weaknesses in favored concepts. BCG references its Innovation CoPilot as an example of a GenAI-based tool designed to challenge and improve ideas across the innovation cycle.   

Leadership Takeaway 

The article concludes that human insight remains essential. BCG describes GenAI as an “amazingly fast, tireless, and smart intern,” useful for strengthening human creativity rather than replacing it. The broader message for innovation leaders is that GenAI should not be treated only as a brainstorming engine. Its greater strategic value may lie in helping teams question inherited assumptions before generating solutions. In a fast-changing environment, that discipline can help organizations spot shifts earlier, redefine opportunity spaces, and build stronger innovation pipelines.   

This summary is based on the original March 6, 2024 BCG article “To Drive Innovation with GenAI, Start by Questioning Your Assumptions” by Alan Iny, Justin Manly, and Luc de Brabandere. All rights to the original content remain with the respective copyright holders.