Canva cofounder Cameron Adams says forcing a single AI tool on employees kills experimentation. Staff get budgets to choose their own, and the company holds a week-long AI discovery period.
Canva's cofounder Cameron Adams doesn't want to force his staff to use a specific AI tool. He thinks that would kill the experimentation he needs.
In an interview with Rapid Response released Tuesday, Adams said employees get their own AI budgets to try out whatever tools they want. "We're not mandating Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever tool you want to use in your part of the company," Adams said. "You can figure it out."
The approach is meant to keep staff curious and willing to test new workflows. "If you force a tool on them, they're just going to do that very begrudgingly," Adams said. "They're not going to enter into this very experimental mindset that we need them to."
Canva also holds an AI Discovery Week where normal work stops. The whole week, Adams said, is for people to think about problems they face, tools they've heard about, and opportunities from colleagues in other industries. "We want you to try those out for the entire week," he said.
The design company has made AI a core part of its business. In April it launched Canva AI 2.0, a conversational platform that turns simple prompts into designs. Business Insider tested it against Claude Design to build the same slide deck and found the results comparable.
Getting employees to use AI is a struggle across corporate America. Some companies take a different route. Duolingo added AI use as a performance metric. JPMorgan and Disney started token leaderboards ranking staff usage. Others watch the cost closely.
AI spend is a growing concern for enterprises. One tactic that has emerged is using different models and tools for different tasks, rather than sticking with a single provider. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in June that this approach avoids burning expensive tokens on simple tasks. He recommended using cheaper Chinese models as defaults.
Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch told TechCrunch earlier this month that companies are getting smarter about how they mix tools across their AI stack, including the model, data platform, sandbox, and gateway.
Adams's approach puts the choice in the employees' hands. "If you force a tool on them, they're just going to do that very begrudgingly," he said. The message is clear: let people pick their own path, and they'll experiment more freely.
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