Artificial Intelligence-Driven Product Development and Strategic Innovation Excellence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has reshaped the strategic innovation environment by allowing corporations to improve the speed of their decision-making, respond to the ever-changing competitive environment, and incorporate sustainability into the development of products as well as operational practices. Although it is witnessing an increasing scholarly interest, there is still a void in the knowledge of how AI-enabled innovation capabilities were translated into both performance improvement and sustainable development outcomes. The studies conducted in the Nigerian banking industry showed that the use of AI had a substantial impact on organizational agility that, in turn, increased productivity, competitiveness, and customer satisfaction. Similarly, the sustainability-based studies pointed out that the AI potentials had to be created on organizational, technical, and processing levels to guarantee responsible transformation on a long-term basis. This paper integrated these findings and came up with a unified conceptual model that places organizational agility as a strategic intermediary between AI implementation and company-level innovative performance. Finally, to ensure the responsible and performance-enhancing AI diffusion in various industries, this paper discussed managerial implications and future research directions.