Deloitte’s Gen AI Lab Programme

Our new Gen AI Lab Programme at Amsterdam’s The Garage will be a dedicated “show me don’t tell me space” a ‘birth place’ and site for of customer events and collaboration. When it comes to generative AI, we’ll be offering a whole tool kit of collaborative hackathons, labs and design sprints, to help customers make the most of this game-changing innovation. 

Here’s a sneak peak of what’s possible: Our recent Generative AI Hackathon in Amsterdam brought together Deloitte staff from around the firm to conceive of AI solutions to three customers’ concerns. In this case, 80-plus staff members participated in this official kickstart to AI innovation for the three clients: Leiden University Medical Center, Coca Cola Europacific Partners and VodafoneZiggo. The competitive one-day event put our innovation capabilities to the test, and showed our clients concrete examples of how generative AI can benefit them.

Co-creating with clients and partners

Participants quickly set to work tackling the goal of the day: Use the full scope of AI potential to address client challenges. For Leiden University Medical Center, it was improving patient care and enhancing health outcomes. Coca Cola Europacific Partners sought ideas for empowering their workforce. VodafoneZiggo was looking for solutions to help predict network outages.

Fifteen teams competed to pitch the best generative AI idea to the clients, with hackers (developers) worked alongside hipsters (designers) and hustlers (strategists, digital ethics gurus). The teams’ diversity was typical of that seen in client projects, which bring together a variety of perspectives and skill sets from around the firm. If the challenge called for it, a team might perform an AI maturity assessment, create a governance framework, develop customer journeys, design user experiences and even propel a concept from MVP use case to full-scale integration. 

One of our technology partners Google was on site to help with their Google Model Garden, supplementing other technologies the participants could mix and match, such as our own Deloitte GenAI solution; diffusion models, like Midjourney; and code-assisting tools, like Copilot. A Deloitte representative explained how to uphold end-user privacy, ethical considerations and the regulatory framework, then judged the final hackathon presentations by these factors.

The end result of this electrifying day was a varied set of innovative ideas, and working prototypes of generative AI-enabled solutions for our clients. Of all the exceptional pitches, one was selected by the client as a winner.  While still a long way to go, the fact that our clients have already taken steps to properly implement the hackathon’s concepts is a testament to how Deloitte and it's client are going beyond talking about it and making innovation a reality.

But the hackathon’s pitches are just the first step toward AI innovation for your organisation. We’ll bring many more hackathons and other events to life in the new Gen AI Maker space; by setting the stage for dedicated collaboration, the space will allow you to explore the outer limits of AI’s potential to push your business. 

If you’re curious about how generative AI or how our Lab Programme can transform your company, please reach out to Naser Bakhshi or Stephen Ward. We’d love to hear about your challenges and share how AI can galvanise your business.