I believe very strongly that play and experimentation are key to innovation.
Helping develop knowledge and expertise around the art-of-the-possible and developing the bottom up innovation skills needed to compliment top down innovation approaches to solving problems is how you do innovation.
That is why I entered a 48 hour hackathon to experiment and create something that uses the latest Gemini Flash 2.5 Image model aka Nano Banana.
My project GenerativeAI.fashion demonstrates the kind of use cases that the latest developments in AI allow.
In 48 hours, through play and experimentation, I not only learnt a great deal about how to utilise this particular generative AI provider (I've also experimented with others) but I've delivered something that is tangible and of value incredibly quickly.
Am I suggesting this hackathon project will scale to production? - No of course not. Good technologists are able to demonstrate value quickly while also planning larger, scalable solutions.
Here is an article I wrote to describe the hackathon project.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7370732170858115072/
In short: Show, don't tell. Practical Innovation beats Innovation Theory.
Talk is cheap. Ideas are easy, implementation is hard.
It is very easy to think that everyone who talks about AI knows what they are talking about.
They really don't.
You'll see lots of AI experts and thought leaders that have never developed anything remotely complicated with AI and couldn't tell you how ML or GenAI works.
Be aware of technology consultant companies that are very good at brochureware (vaporware) but have no real AI examples to show and will engage you in multi-month long consultancy conversations before you see any value.
Partner with technologists that can quickly demonstrate value instead.
If you are interested in learning more about this technology or are interested in working with me to develop a commercial project that utilises it, please don't hesitate to contact me on LinkedIn.
-- Lee
