Empowering Enterprises with Responsible AI Strategies

The adoption of AI in enterprise settings is becoming essential for business transformation and operational efficiency. However, success requires a balance of strategy, governance, and change management to ensure AI delivers measurable business value while aligning with organizational culture and security needs. In the most recent episode of the AI First podcast, hosted by ​@Jon  (Chief Customer Officer at Box) and Stanley Toh (Head of Enterprise End User Services and Experiences at Broadcom) shared insights into Broadcom's approach to leveraging AI effectively.

Here we summarize the key takeaways from their conversation, focusing on Broadcom's strategies for AI governance, application use cases, IT leadership evolution, and cultural adaptation. Whether you're beginning your AI journey or refining your strategy, these lessons provide a roadmap for harnessing AI in a complex enterprise environment.

1. Start with Business Problems, Not Trends

One of the essential themes of the conversation centered on aligning AI initiatives with real business needs. Stanley articulated how important it is to foster collaboration between IT and business units to ensure AI adoption is tied to impactful outcomes. He cautioned against jumping on trends without evaluating their strategic importance:

"If you collaborate more closely with the business unit, understand what are their needs, what are they trying to solve, and then you bring to the table the AI technology that is able to help them solve those problems... help them transform."

Stanley also distinguished between two categories of AI investments. The first type focuses on driving efficiency and meaningful impact, while the second he referred to as "feel-good AI," which delivers trendy but ultimately superficial solutions:

"There's two kinds of AI. One is to help the business grow... The second pool, what we call the feel good AI, and that is the one that you want to try to avoid...those are the ones that people like...but it doesn't make any impact to the business."

Jon Herstein complemented this perspective, adding how businesses need to rigorously evaluate whether AI is even the best solution for a problem before diving into implementation:

"What's the business outcome to your point? What's the problem you're trying to solve? And sometimes, candidly, is AI the right solution for that problem? Maybe it's not."

2. Flagship AI Use Cases at Broadcom

Broadcom has been an innovator in embedding AI across various functions, and Stanley highlighted several high-impact applications:

• Customer Support: Broadcom successfully implemented an AI chatbot six years ago for internal support, achieving an 85% effectiveness rate—a testament to AI's ability to streamline customer service. Broadcom is also using AI for external support, this is a great area to start with. “Support is the low hanging fruit” added ​@Jon . “More customers are requiring self service experiences now” added Stanley, stating that AI will enable more self service execution of tasks “self healing”.  

• Legal Document Processing: Using AI to summarize and compare legal documents significantly improves efficiency. Knowledge management in general is a big area of opportunity. 

"With AI, it's easier for you to decipher and get a summary... they can do comparison very quickly...this saves a lot of time for legal."

• Software Development: AI accelerates coding cycles for R&D teams, expediting time-to-market for products:

"They can code faster and reduce the cycle time... If you reduce the time of development, you can go to market faster."

• Employee Experience Transformation: By partnering with Box Professional Services, Broadcom is reimagining workflows to make employee onboarding, collaboration, and daily tasks seamless:

"We are using all the latest modules and components from Box Enterprise Plus... to see how we can make an employee journey even before they start more seamless."

Broadcom has enabled Box AI to allow employees to better access and summarize content in Box. Broadcom is using AI with applicant screening for new hires as an aid to the recruitment team.

3. AI Governance: The Backbone of Responsible AI Adoption

AI is enabling IT to become more of a business driver within Broadcom. IT needs new skillsets, to adopt AI, including data scientists, machine learning engineers and data ethics experts. Cyber security is also changing due to AI. 

When adopting AI across the organization, governance is critical to avoid "AI sprawl" and ensure investments deliver business value securely. Broadcom asks employees to think first about the need for a new tool and then understand if an existing tool is available to perform the same function. Stanley explained Broadcom’s rigorous governance process:

"From the onset when AI first came into the picture, we actually formed a governance framework. Even before you do a POC, you have to submit a request to go through legal, cybersecurity, technology stack review, and provide a business justification even before you start."

This governance structure helps prevent overlapping tools while mitigating risks tied to sensitive information and compliance. Broadcom is restrictive on tools that record meeting minutes, for example. Some countries also restrict use of AI to monitor employee performance, attendance at events, etc. Importantly, governance extends to existing vendor platforms that integrate AI features after implementation:

"Any platform that has AI in it... even if, let’s say, Microsoft Teams added AI features, those would have to go through the same governance process."

Stanley further stressed the importance of nonnegotiable controls, such as prohibiting AI platforms from training models on company data and requiring robust citation for AI-produced outputs to verify accuracy. These measures underscore the critical role of transparency and security in building trust across organizational teams.

4. Cultural Integration and Change Management

Broadcom’s approach to AI adoption not only focuses on technology but also emphasizes cultural adaptation and employee experience. Stanley emphasized the need to embrace technological change while maintaining company integrity.

“Transparency, communication, and training” are three pillars Stanley referenced which Broadcom uses to overcome resistance to these changes. Some employees will naturally embrace AI, others will not, some may not need AI. It is important to help people understand what AI can do for them. It is difficult to strike a balance between looking down everything and having it completely open. 

Non negotiables include, limiting access to models to train on data, and also security, is it in the cloud or on premise. Also preventing hallucinations. ​@Jon referenced Box customers using Box for policy documents and referencing the citations to also read the policy, in addition to the AI summary. 

Jon summed up these principles neatly, encouraging organizations to focus on "delivering value to stakeholders, thinking about the culture... and improving the experience for users."

5. Evolving Role of the CIO and IT Leadership

The conversation also touched on how the role of IT leaders, including CIOs, is evolving in response to AI adoption. Stanley outlined how his responsibilities span identity management, collaboration tools, device support, and training—all areas tied closely to end-user experiences:

"I cover anything, basically, that touches the end user from identity access management to all the collaboration suite to all the support services."

Through this lens, the conversation illuminated the increasingly strategic role of IT in fostering innovation, supporting employees during transitions, and driving enterprise transformation with AI-powered tools.Broadcom is also using AI to enhance IT operations, for example, for recovery/restart of servers, memory upgrades, etc. Stanley described a specific example of using AI agents to deploy autonomous IT operations end to end for employee laptop management.  “The process of deploying a laptop in most companies is almost always the same, manual steps”

​@Jon asked for best practices on how AI agents can work together. Stanley, emphasized the importance of “human in the loop” in the early stages of deployment. “Trust but verify” is a management ethos at Broadcom. 

Two questions which Stanley asks at the beginning are 1) is it solving a real problem and 2) what is the cost. Cost relates to ongoing maintenance, not just up front costs. Finally, is this a passing trend vs a sustainable solution. 

Final Thoughts

Broadcom's journey offers insight into ensuring AI initiatives are impactful, secure, and culturally sensitive. By fostering IT-business collaboration, implementing robust governance, embedding AI into flagship use cases, and preparing employees for change, Stanley and Broadcom demonstrate what effective enterprise AI adoption looks like.

​@Jon ended by asking Stanley about three concepts, 1)value - the critical path to value realization, 2) culture and change management, and 3) criteria for success from a user experience perspective.

On value, Stanley, emphasized that organizations have limited budgets and the solution needs to be sustainable.

On culture, this change is inevitable...

"We cannot stop this. The AI revolution is coming... Don’t stop. Embrace it."

However, he argued this transformation must not compromise organizational values:

"Your company culture, your company integrity, your company reputation... Without that, there’s no company."

On customer experience, Stanley emphasized three things 1) security, finding the right balance 2) no hallucinations, so transparency is critical and 2) finally, solid adoption and training. 

“The key to sustainable use is enablement, training, communication, not just throw the tools out there” added ​@Jon 

For companies looking to implement AI successfully, these insights are a reminder to prioritize strategy, governance, and human-centric design in every phase of deployment. AI isn’t just about technology; it’s about transforming the way an organization delivers value, adapts culture, and enhances experiences across the board.

To dive deeper, listen to the full AI First podcast episode hosted by Jon Herstein and Stanley To for actionable expertise on enterprise AI adoption.

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