InnovationandAI
UCDandEXL PartnertoDrive
Business Transformation
UCD | EXL Innovation & AI Lab
The rapid advancement of AI over the past two years has fundamentally reshaped business across industries. Companies of all sizes have sought to leverage AI to transform their businesses. But success requires more than just AI access and expertise. It requires an organisation with the innovation mindset and culture to recognise and act on the opportunities created by the AI revolution.
In 2023, UCD Innovation Academy partnered with EXL, a global analytics and digital solutions company serving industries including insurance, healthcare, banking and financial services, media, retail, and others. EXL, which employs 61,000 people globally, opened a new base in Dublin the same year.
EXL and UCD’s collaboration centres on the UCD | EXL Innovation and AI Lab, a bespoke programme that twins innovation skills, knowledge and mindset with deep AI subject matter expertise, combined to generate real solutions to business challenges. The programme is the first of its kind in Ireland to combine AI domain expertise with a design-led, problem solving methodology.
“Ireland is well-placed to be a hub of innovation in this space, and EXL’s plans to partner with local research institutions will be an important contribution to developing the next generation of talent”
Former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar.
UCD | EXL Innovation & AI Lab
The UCD | EXL Innovation and AI Lab is designed to unlock the collective strengths and expertise of EXL to produce timely and novel solutions to real business challenges.
The programme runs over six months and combines online and in-person classes. The centrepiece of the programme is a five day in-person bootcamp in UCD where participants apply the creative and innovative mindset they have nurtured to date to design and prototype AI solutions to business challenges. The programme culminates in a series of pitches where teams present the prototypes they have designed and piloted to senior leadership.
A unique aspect of this programme is the creation of interdisciplinary teams including technical and business experts. Every team is partnered with a Business Sponsor, a senior EXL team member who provides teams with insights, guidance and resources to support their solutions.
The programme seeks to:
Provide fresh AI expertise and insights to a range of team members, from
Combine
“Developing innovative technology solutions to complex business problems is at the heart of what EXL does for our clients, and by expanding our presence in Ireland, we are gaining access to a truly world class talent market and a key geographic hub for our global operations.
We will look to train AI experts in Ireland to unlock the transformative power of generative AI, revolutionize industries and drive new business opportunities. Dublin’s exceptional talent pool will help us shape the future of technology, fuelling innovation and propelling our clients to the forefront of the global AI landscape.”
Rohit Kapoor, Chairman and CEO, EXL
“Our collaboration with UCD helps us leverage their extensive innovation ecosystem and equip our leaders to drive real business value for our customers. EXL leaders get an opportunity to sharpen their transformation capabilities through industry AI use cases, extensive networking with thought leaders and accessing institutions to validate product-market fit.
This will help accelerate a culture of innovation, which is essential in driving our data-led transformation value proposition for our clients”
Sanjay Dutt, Senior Vice President, Human Resources
"The acceleration of AI technology has fundamentally reshaped the business landscape across all sectors. Companies of every size now have access to powerful AI capabilities but an organisation's underlying mindset and culture is still a determining factor between success and failure.
Access to AI is just the beginning—it's the human elements of problem solving, critical thinking, and collaborative action that will ultimately drive genuine business transformation."
Eleanor Kelly, Head of Strategy and Partnerships, UCD Innovation Academy
Key Features of the Programme
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Participants in the Innovation and AI Lab came from across EXL, ensuring the programme leveraged the collective strengths and expertise of the entire organisation. Teams are curated to ensure representatives from all relevant business divisions. The most successful innovations typically emerge from environments where diverse expertise is not merely assembled but thoughtfully integrated and facilitated, with team members developing sufficient shared language to translate insights across domains
This curated, interdisciplinary approach ensures:
Cognitive Diversity:
Teams with varied disciplinary backgrounds bring different mental models, problem-solving approaches, and analytical frameworks to challenges.
Boundary-Spanning Insights:
The best innovations often emerge at the intersection of disciplines. When experts from different fields collaborate, they can recognise patterns and possibilities invisible within siloed thinking.
Foster an innovation mindset and innovation thinking
Enhanced Problem Definition:
Multidisciplinary teams excel at reframing problems more holistically. While engineers might focus on technical feasibility, designers prioritise usability, and business experts consider market viability together they develop more robust problem definitions.
Balanced Solutions:
Interdisciplinary teams naturally balance competing priorities (technical excellence, user experience, business viability, sustainability, etc.).
Customer-Centric Focus:
Diverse teams better represent the multifaceted needs of customers, whose problems rarely confine themselves to a single domain of expertise.
Implementation Advantage:
Products designed with cross-functional input tend to encounter fewer downstream challenges, as potential issues across domains are addressed earlier in the process.
Organisational Learning:
The knowledge exchange that occurs in interdisciplinary teams accelerates organisational capability development, creating lasting innovation capacity beyond individual projects
Participant Experience
“As computer engineers, we focus on problem-solving and algorithms, but this course empowered us to showcase and articulate the business value and benefits for our customers.”
“The UCD Innovation Academy gave us the chance to step back and look at how we could do better.”
“On this course, we met like-minded people across different sectors of the company. We learned from and supported one another, tackling real-life business problems and sharing solutions. There were so many ‘a-ha!’ moments where we realised that we could do better; one of these was realising the human impact of our engineering, rather than just the business value.”
“My approach to work has changed entirely: I can now step back and look more holistically at projects, while also understanding both the opportunities and challenges offered by AI ”
Participant Experience
“EXL made a conscious pivot to being an AI solutions and services company, so what excited me most about this programme was that it was innovation-based: less focus on theory, more on putting learning into practice,”
“The focus was on the process of innovation and prototyping - not things that I necessarily thought of before.”
“Instead of immediately jumping to solutions, we learned to ideate and really think about the problem first. We saw the benefit of gathering insights from multiple stakeholders, as well as exploring technical aspects of AI and looking at case studies to help visualise user-friendly prototypes.”
“Innovation isn’t a job - it’s a function. Anyone can do it, and it is to be embraced, not feared,” he says.
SpotlightonAI
The programme equips participants with a combination of innovation and AI skills and expertise. By the end of the programme, participants will:
Understand the parameters and requirements of an AI-centric project
Recognise the significance of the AI/ ML pipeline and its components
Identify and align AI/ ML technologies to specific business challenges
Prioritise solutions based on feasibility and impact
Develop a detailed, actionable plan that provides a blueprint for prototype development
Understand the nuances and capabilities of various AI technologies
Design compelling narratives around the planned AI approach for stakeholders
Use data visualisation and storytelling techniques to communicate complex AI concepts
Learn techniques to refine the implementation plan based on feedback
BusinessChampions
Business Champions are a unique feature of the Innovation and AI Lab. Business champions or sponsors provide crucial advantages to innovation teams that significantly enhance each team’s chance success:
Strategic Alignment:
Champions ensure innovation efforts align with broader business objectives and strategic priorities, preventing projects from becoming isolated experiments with limited organizational impact
Resource Access:
They unlock critical resources (funding, talent, technology, facilities) that might otherwise be inaccessible to innovation teams working outside established business units.
Organisational Navigation:
Champions help teams understand and navigate complex organisational politics, processes, and power structures that could otherwise become innovation roadblocks.
Leadership Credibility:
Their endorsement lends immediate credibility and visibility to innovation initiatives, helping teams secure buy-in from stakeholders who might
BusinessChampions
Risk Mitigation:
Experienced business sponsors anticipate potential implementation challenges and help teams adapt their solutions to fit organizational realities, reducing the risk of promising innovations failing during implementation.
Market Insight:
They provide valuable context about customer needs, competitive dynamics, and market trends that helps teams focus their innovation efforts on commercially viable opportunities
Decision Acceleration:
Champions can remove bureaucratic obstacles, expedite decision-making processes, and create "safe spaces" where teams can experiment without excessive administrative burden.
Scaling Pathway:
Perhaps most critically, they create the organisational connections and transition mechanisms that help successful innovations scale beyond pilot phases and achieve meaningful business integration
EXLBusinessChampions
Business Champion Perspective
Arturo Devasa, Chief AI Architect, EXL
“When we stepped back to look at our needs here at EXL, we knew that we needed to equip leaders with future skills, accelerate digital transformation, strengthen collaboration between industry and academia and enhance organisational ability.
This programme centred on blending the UCD Innovation Academy’s hands-on, design-led innovation pedagogy with CeADAR’s world-class AI and data analytics expertise.
It has transformed EXL’s data specialists by imparting an entrepreneurial mindset, practical AI skills and cross-disciplinary problem-solving abilities. Participants gain real-world exposure to industry challenges, enabling them to drive innovation and deliver tangible business value for their customers.
The lab deepens partnerships between academia and enterprise, creating a sustainable pipeline of talent and fostering an innovation culture across organisations. By integrating design thinking within AI, the programme helps organisations to rapidly adapt and refine their product-market fit, contributing to more efficient, data-driven decision making operations ”
“The positive impact has been significant: not only has it accelerated the transformation of EXL’s operations and leadership capabilities, but it has also contributed to Ireland’s broader innovation ecosystem, as evidenced by plans for further job creation and enhanced competitiveness in AI-driven digital operations.”
Business Champion Perspective
Arun Rangamani, Senior Vice-President for Healthcare, EXL
“Here at EXL, we wanted to help our team to adapt and integrate data-led AI into our operations.
The UCD Innovation & AI Lab has been vital, enhancing the team’s ability to communicate, collaborate and adapt to AI innovations.
Since taking part, we’ve seen increased confidence in AI. Roles that once required an AI specialist can now be filled by multi-skilled individuals who have a better understanding of our industry and customers
The course has brought clarity and confidence to our staff in deploying AI solutions at an increased pace. The Business Model Canvas framework was particularly well-received, providing a structured approach for leaders to build their ideas in the run-up to product development. It has helped EXL teams to better collaborate with one another
Now, the team is able to approach AI holistically, fostering open discussions and idea-sharing and blue-sky thinking across the organisation. As AI continues to play a critical role in our business, the team’s ability to adapt and integrate data-led AI into operations has improved ”
“The Business Model Canvas framework was particularly well-received, providing a structured approach for leaders to build their ideas in the run-up to product development. It has helped EXL teams to better collaborate with one another.”
The energy in the class with EXL during UCD bootcamp week was electric. Teams were on their feet problem solving, interrogating solutions from different perspectives, prototyping, role playing use cases, calling in their network to help colleagues on other teams, and more.
One participant memorably pointed to a wire frame on the wall designed in a day long design sprint and told me they could have taken six months to get to the same outcome if they’d been allowed to.
Fergal Brophy, Entrepreneurial Specialist
UCD
Innovation Academy
Innovation and AI Lab Facilitator
The real value of this programme lies in its integration of AI capability with innovation practice—bridging a common gap between technical potential and business application.
By leading with a design-led, problem-solving approach, we helped participants move beyond theoretical understanding to deliver real, implementable solutions.
The in-person sessions at UCD were particularly effective in catalysing collaboration across geographies and functions, creating the conditions for meaningful, crossdisciplinary innovation.
Our role was to provide the structure, mindset, and facilitation that enabled participants to apply AI in ways that drive business value, not just technical outputs. The long-term impact is clear: stronger internal capability, greater organisational agility, and a growing culture of innovation that continues to deliver value beyond the programme.
Dr. Lollie Mancey, Entrepreneurial Specialist UCD Innovation Academy Innovation and AI Lab Facilitator
SanjayDutt, EXLSeniorVice-President HumanResources
Impact
The programme culminates in a pitch event with each team pitching their prototypes to senior business leaders. To date, over ten new business solutions have been generated as a result of the programme.
Significantly, the innovation mindset and culture created in the programme is a long term impact that continues to generate positive impact for EXL.
100% of survey respondents indicated that after the programme they were confident / very confident in:
Generating innovative ideas to address complex business challenges
Applying creative thinking in problem solving
Incorporating AI into creative problem solving
Peoplecanbewaryofrisk,butriskisessentialtoinnovation. Bringingtogetherdiverseteamstoexchangeideasandlearnfrom oneanotheristhewayforward.
There’sbeenastrong,significantandquantifiablestep-uponthe innovationmindset.Morediversethinkinghasledustodifferent ideas,butthisisjustthebeginning.
Attheoutset,wehad70peopleonthisprogramme,butwewant togrowthenumberstoatleast700.
SanjayDutt, EXLSeniorVice-President HumanResources
Participants surveyed after the programme shared what parts of the programme they found the most valuable.
Mindset Development
Learning new approaches to creativity
Developing innovative thinking
Shifting focus from technology to consumer needs
In-Person Collaboration Opportunities
Opportunity to collaborate with colleagues across business units and geographies
In-person workshops at UCD Dublin
Face-to-face collaboration with peers
Structured Innovation Methodologies
Design thinking approaches
Business Model/Canvas creation
Ideation techniques
Taking solutions through the lifecycle
Empathy
Building empathy skills to understand problems, and solutions, from multiple perspectives
Practical Format of Programme
Prototyping
Business viability assessment for AI solutions
Participant Reflections
The in-person sessions in UCD Dublin gave us the opportunity to learn new ways of thinking creatively.
The facilitators really helped us stretch our thinking and see things from the consumer perspective. We have a bias towards tech at EXL but the repeated reminders to focus on the consumer was crucial to stretching our minds.
The in person sessions at Dublin really helped drive the mindset of innovation and the face to face collaboration with peers helped me understand the challenges that leaders faces.
Learning new ways to ensure the business viability of AI solutions was really valuable
Working as a team to brainstorm and come up with prototypes was enjoyable and useful
