The Pizza Chain That Became an AI Front-Runner

What’s the first company that comes to mind when you hear the term artificial intelligence (AI)? DeepMind? OpenAI? Boston Dynamics? Well, whatever it is, it’s most likely not Domino’s Pizza. But this international pizza chain is a fascinating case study on AI.

Domino’s adoption of AI is quite remarkable, mostly due to the fact that the company is in the category of companies least likely to adopt AI. Yes, it’s a multinational non-tech company founded in the 1960s with a streamlined value chain and a dominating position on the market. Companies with these traits tend to be late to the digitization party, if you know what I mean.

For large companies with optimized value chains, adopting AI can be a colossal challenge, as processes often need to be fundamentally reworked. That’s why it’s crucial to adopt AI solutions incrementally and to use the appropriate AI strategy for each activity.

I recently posted an article on AI business strategies. If you haven’t read it, I would recommend checking it out, but let me give you an executive summary regardless.

AI can improve any activity through either automation or augmentation. Automation is the removal of humans from an activity, while augmentation is the empowering of humans in an activity. Automation and augmentation is a scale that houses four AI strategies. Every AI solution in the world can be placed within one or more of these four AI strategies:

1. The efficiency strategy, in which activities are optimized through automation.
2. The effectiveness strategy, in which activities are made seamless, enabling easier communication.
3. The expert strategy, in which AI empowers decision-making.
4. The innovation strategy, in which AI enables creativity.

As we’ll find out, Domino’s has adopted at least three of these four AI strategies. Let me walk you through three AI implementations made by the company, and then towards the end, we’ll look at the bigger picture.