Distributed AI Leadership: The Generator as a Model for Faculty-Led Innovation

The rapid ascent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) presents higher education leaders with urgent challenges of pedagogy, ethics, and institutional adaptation. Yet many leadership responses have been top-down or vendor-driven, sidelining the faculty who are closest to teaching and learning. The current reflective case study examines The Generator, a faculty-led interdisciplinary AI lab at Babson College, as a model of distributed and relational leadership in the AI era. Drawing on theories of distributed leadership, relational leadership, and collective action, we explore how The Generator enacts a values-driven leadership practice through its decentralized lab structure, faculty-led programs, and signature “Family Conversations.” These practices foreground care, trust, and inclusion in decisions about AI adoption, which offers an alternative to purely efficiency-driven models of technological leadership. We argue that The Generator provides a transferable model for how faculty can lead institutional adaptation to AI in ways that are mission-aligned and pedagogically informed while emphasizing that each institution must adapt leadership practices to its own context, mission, and values. The case contributes to broader conversations about leadership and governance amid technological disruption, suggesting that distributed, relational leadership practices may be essential for guiding higher education through the uncertainties of the AI age.