With 109 qualified responses, here’s what we’re seeing from innovation and R&D professionals in March 2025. The question we asked: “How has use of GenAI tools impacted your (or your team’s) work? Where are you finding them most useful?” Responses are broken down below by the top five use cases, as well as by industry.
For a look at which specific tools our respondents are using, see this post.
Top 5 Uses of Generative AI
- Content Creation
Many professionals mentioned using GenAI for things like:- “Content creation and data management.”
- “Writing emails, developing talking points for presentations, creating innovation challenges, evaluating proposals.”
- “Draft marketing and thought leadership pieces (avoid the blank page) and to revise them.”
- Research and Synthesis
This includes everything from literature review to competitive research:- “Secondary / market research, ideation and concept development, validation of research findings, persona generation.”
- “Getting up to speed in a new area. Good for synthesizing research into summaries.”
- “Accelerating foundational target market & competitive research.”
- Coding and Technical Tasks
Several respondents use GenAI for development work and code assistance:- “Coding efficiency. Accelerating foundational target market & competitive research.”
- “Altering and debugging code.”
- “A little bit of coding, as we are designers, not developers.”
- Ideation and Brainstorming
Tools help generate and refine ideas quickly:- “Generating quick lists & ranges of ideas/concepts to evaluate and/or spark additional ideas.”
- “Brainstorming and rapid iteration of an idea, creating pretty good first drafts of the needed documents with minimal input.”
- “Stimulating returns from replies… tools, frameworks or stimulus to move further in thinking.”
- Administrative and Workflow Automation
From summarizing documents to internal workflows:- “Accelerating administrative workflows & tasks (drafting emails, optimizing schedules)”
- “Summarizing or simplifying materials. Providing internally validated and controlled ‘chatbots'”
- “Reducing time to write things.”
Use By Industry
Among the seven industries from which we received the largest number of survey responses, here’s how they described their use of generative AI.
Professional Services
Firms in this sector are using GenAI for “content creation and data management” and “early research.” It’s also seen as a driver of “coding efficiency,” helping teams accelerate foundational research and improve technical workflows.
Financial Services
Innovation teams are using GenAI to “support strategy development and new offering ideation.” It enables “more interesting, smarter ideas” by helping professionals synthesize insights and think creatively about new solutions.
Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences
This sector values GenAI for “getting up to speed in a new area,” “synthesizing research into summaries,” and “automating standard documents and customizing for specific studies.” It has also improved “research and compilation of information,” making early-stage investigation more efficient.
Consumer Goods and Products
Companies are integrating GenAI across their operations, including through a “center of excellence and partnership model.” They rely on it for “automated scouting,” evaluating patents, generating concepts, and conducting market and regulatory research.
Technology
Tech companies are using GenAI for “strategy development, proposal generation, SOW development, technical whitepapers, thought leadership, concept writing.” It’s also helping with “writing content and landing pages,” accelerating both marketing and technical documentation.
Energy & Utilities
Respondents report using GenAI to “refine reports and written products” and to check for “grammar, clarity and brevity.” It’s primarily viewed as a tool for improving internal communication and documentation workflows.
Higher Education
GenAI is helping academics and researchers overcome creative inertia by providing “thought starters, social posts, note taking and summarization.” It’s seen as useful to “reduce the inertia of a blank page,” especially when drafting new material.
(Featured image by Barn Images on Unsplash.)
