Accelerating AI-first innovation at scale

Client need

By 2024, artificial intelligence was transforming how medical devices industry operated, from product design and manufacturing to clinical insight and customer engagement. Competitors were already using AI to shorten development cycles, improve quality, and bring smarter devices to market faster. Startups were pushing the boundaries even further.

For one Fortune 100 global medical devices company, the question wasn’t if they would use AI, but how fast and how deeply they could make it part of the business. Like many organizations in this space, they saw enormous promise, but also the practical challenges that come with scale, regulation, and change.  

The leadership team saw the potential for AI to transform how the business worked, yet progress was uneven. Teams held different views of what AI could do, and early experiments surfaced concerns about data privacy, accuracy, and safety. Many employees weren’t sure how AI fit into their day-to-day work or how to use it responsibly.  

To move forward, the company needed to focus on a few critical shifts:

• Tackling questions and concerns at every level of the organization

• Creating a shared understanding of where and how AI drives value

• Helping leaders translate AI strategy into meaningful action with their teams

That’s where BTS came in.

Solution

To accelerate transformation at scale, BTS designed a phased capability-acceleration program that met leaders where they were, building confidence, speed, and AI fluency across the enterprise through immersive, business-driven experiences.

Tailored by leadership level
From executives shaping enterprise strategy to directors driving operational execution, each audience experienced targeted challenges and decision contexts that made AI real and relevant to their work.

Global alignment
A multilingual, virtual rollout enabled simultaneous engagement of thousands of employees worldwide, ensuring speed, consistency, and measurable impact across regions.

Continuous evolution
Regular refresh cycles kept the experience aligned to the company’s advancing AI maturity, embedding adaptability and readiness as ongoing capabilities.

Wave 1: Executive immersion

Audience: Senior leadership | Format: Live, in-person

The journey started with the top 100 leaders reimagining how AI could power growth and innovation. In an immersive, board-based simulation, executives pressure-tested new business models, explored disruptive use cases, and made high-stakes decisions with AI in real time.

By “taking the future for a test drive,” they moved past abstract discussions and directly experienced how AI could:

• Accelerate time to insight

• Sharpen strategy and decision quality

• Unlock new sources of business and customer value

The group left with a defined vision and roadmap for putting AI to work, where it adds value, how it changes leadership decisions, and what to prioritize first. It also helped leaders address their early concerns about reliability and safety together, building collective confidence to lead the change.

Wave 2: Director activation

Audience: ~300 directors globally | Format: Live workshops

Next came the catalyst for scale. Directors translated the executive vision into practical, measurable action through fast-paced, hands-on simulations built around their toughest business challenges.

They didn’t just learn about AI, they used it. In realistic decision scenarios, directors practiced how to:

• Ask sharper, data-driven questions

• Interpret insights and balance human judgment with machine input

• Identify opportunities to automate, innovate, or reimagine workflows

• Treat AI as a trusted performance partner, not just a technical tool

Each director left with a concrete activation plan, tailored to their function, and the confidence to lead change from the middle.

Wave 3: Global rollout

Audience: ~13,000 employees | Format: Virtual, multilingual, concurrent delivery

Finally, the transformation went enterprise-wide.

Through a high-energy, virtual experience, more than 13,000 employees across all regions and functions built shared confidence and capability to use AI in real work.

The experience made AI tangible for every role, from marketing and R&D to manufacturing and commercial teams. Participants discovered how small, real-world applications could:

• Simplify everyday tasks

• Drive smarter, faster decisions

• Deliver immediate business impact for teams and customers

Results

While quantitative metrics such as revenue impact or cycle-time reduction are still emerging, qualitative outcomes point to faster adoption, stronger engagement, and immediate business applications.

“The session was great. My team was inspired. They quickly got the foundations, and many of them actually went out that night and came back the next day with applications and output that we can put to work almost immediately.” – Senior Vice President of Marketing, September 2024

The momentum continues. BTS and the client are expanding the program into a scalable system for agility that keeps pace with the business. New sessions and scenarios are built into daily work, giving leaders and teams ongoing opportunities to apply AI in real decisions.

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