Dr Malina Ngai, Group CEO of health and beauty retail owner AS Watson, has said that artificial intelligence (AI) transformation is a CEO-level mandate and not just an IT project within businesses.
Speaking at the Global Summit of the Consumer Goods Forum on 24 June, which took place in Vienna, Austria, Ngai told delegates: “AI does not transform companies. Leaders do.
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“Culture moves when everyone moves.
“If AI sits in IT, it fails.
“If every function moves together, it scales.”
In the session titled ‘The CEO’s AI Playbook’, Ngai made the case for a CEO-led approach to AI, in which all businesses and functions adopt AI simultaneously, rather than following a traditional ‘cascade’ model where IT departments train different business units.
“This is not about experimentation at the edges. It is about enterprise-wide execution,” said Ngai.
"Traditionally, we start with a defined investment.
“We build a business case, implement the solution and drive initial adoption.
“Once deployed, we measure productivity gains and calculate return on investment (ROI).
“The focus is on achieving a fixed financial return within a set timeframe.
“Value is captured once – not compounded.
“In AS Watson, we begin with value creation – identifying high‐impact AI use cases aligned to strategy in each function.
“Once value is proven, we drive adoption across workflows to embed it operationally.
“As adoption deepens, we achieve value scaling, expanding across functions, geographies, and additional use cases.
“That leads to measurable value realisation which funds and accelerates the next wave of value creation.
"This is how ROI becomes compounding value.”
Ngai introduced the audience to a simple formula to AS Watson’s approach, dubbed ‘The Agility Equation’: Agility = Acceleration – Friction.
Acceleration represents technology investment and ambition, while friction comes from complexity, silos, slow decisions and system design issues.
“Agility is not a talent issue,’ Ngai continued, explaining that most companies over invest in acceleration and under invest in friction removal, meaning that AI adoption across business fails.
“It is not a capability issue, not a software issue.
“It is a leadership choice and a system design issue.
“The question is not how to add more speed.
“It is what friction leaders are willing to remove.”
Beauty businesses are adopting AI across functions, ranging from marketing and product innovation to consumer-facing solutions like skin advisors, as well as customer service.
According to management consultancy McKinsey, generative AI (Gen AI) could add up to US$10bn to the global economy based on its impact on the beauty industry alone.
Closing her keynote, Ngai said: “AI will not transform the company because you bought it.
“It will transform your company because you led it.
“The return on AI does not come from the tool.
“It comes from the courage to change how the company works.
“Gen AI will not just change how retailers and manufacturers work, it will change how we work together.
“Retail will become more human, not less.
“Technology will be invisible.
“Customers will remember how we made them feel, not how advanced our systems were.”
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