Blazing Trails: Bringing AI to the NBA’s Trail Blazers
In late 2023, as generative artificial intelligence began transforming the business landscape, Portland Trail Blazers President of Business Operations Dewayne Hankins asked Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Christa Stout to lead an organization-wide AI initiative. The Trail Blazers sought to communicate this new AI-initiative as part of its culture of experimentation, learning, and innovation and to emphasize that it was not intended to threaten workers or replace people.
The case follows the organization’s evolving approach to AI adoption, from early volunteer-led experimentation and cross-functional collaboration to the development of AI governance, new workflows, and measurable business impact. Along the way, leaders confront questions of employee resistance, psychological safety, organizational communication, and change management as they work to integrate a disruptive technology into day-to-day operations.
Designed for courses on strategic communication, leadership, organizational behavior, innovation, and change management, the case explores how leaders communicate transformational change, build employee engagement, and balance voluntary participation with the eventual need for organization-wide adoption.
Learning Objective
After discussing this case, students should be able to:
- Analyze how leaders use strategic communication to introduce and guide organization-wide change in the face of uncertainty and resistance.
- Evaluate how message framing—including authenticity, vulnerability, and psychological safety—can influence employee engagement, trust, and willingness to experiment with new ways of working.
- Assess how communication strategies should evolve as organizational initiatives evolve, including the transition from voluntary participation to mandatory adoption.
- Examine the role of peer networks, storytelling, and cross-functional communication in building organizational momentum and sustaining large-scale behavioral change.
- Distinguish between communicating about a new technology and communicating about the human and organizational problems the technology is intended to solve.