Johnson & Johnson pivots on GenAI to deliver business value

“A thousand flowers” evolves into focused value

Initially, J&J embraced a “thousand flowers” approach, encouraging broad experimentation and ideation across its vast organization. At its peak, nearly 900 GenAI use cases were being explored, ranging from drug discovery to internal chatbots. This phase was crucial: it encouraged creativity, surfaced niche applications, and allowed employees to learn the technology’s capabilities and limitations.

As J&J’s Chief Information Officer Jim Swanson explained to The Wall Street Journal, 10%-15% of these use cases drove 80% of the value. J&J has is now adopting a more targeted strategy to achieve value from the use cases that show the most promise. Governance has shifted from a centralized board to domain-specific teams—commercial, supply chain, research—empowering those closest to the business to prioritize and scale the highest-impact projects.

Those projects include using GenAI to spot potential supply chain disruptions, such as raw material shortages; helping sales representatives tailor conversations with healthcare providers about new treatments; improving drug development; and more.

Enterprise AI leaders can learn a lot from Johnson & Johnson

Discipline separates hype from progress in enterprise AI. Johnson & Johnson’s GenAI journey offers a rare, real-world blueprint for how large organizations can turn early enthusiasm into durable business impact. The company’s pivot from exploration to execution shows that the future of GenAI is about scaling ides that prove their worth.

Experimentation is essential, but not sufficient

Early, broad experimentation is vital for uncovering what GenAI can (and cannot) do in a specific enterprise context. No, not every GenAI “flower” is going to bloom, but this is what testing and learning is all about: narrowing ideas down to a few workable solutions.

Governance must evolve with maturity

The tension between creative exploration and disciplined execution is not absolute. A hybrid approach—briefly allowing creativity to bloom, then focusing on value—is necessary for ideas to proceed to execution.

High-value use cases win

Johnson & Johnson is now drilling down on GenAI applications in drug discovery, supply chain risk mitigation, and sales enablement. These are areas where GenAI, paired with domain expertise and robust data, can drive measurable business outcomes. It’s also where Johnson & Johnson will need to apply sound approaches to GenAI development, such as fine-tuning large language models properly now that Johnson & Johnson has narrowed their application to where GenAI promises to deliver the most value.

AI is not a magic bullet

AI requires ongoing investment, iteration, and integration with human expertise, UI design, and non-AI logic to deliver sustainable value. Once those flowers start blooming, they’re going to need continuous watering and nurturing from people.

Build the next generation of AI value

We see J&J’s journey as a validation of the approach of start with data-driven experimentation and rapidly converge on the use cases that deliver real business impact. The future of enterprise AI lies in:

Curating high-quality, domain-specific data to fuel GenAI models.
Embedding AI into business processes with clear ROI checkpoints.
Empowering business units with the tools and governance to scale what works, and sunset what doesn’t.

Johnson & Johnson’s pivot is about maturation. As the world learns how to harness GenAI, the lesson is clear: focus, governance, and relentless pursuit of value are the new imperatives for AI success.

Centific can help your business adopt GenAI for business value.

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