AI tool of the week

What problem does NotebookLM’s custom reports solve?

Business leaders and strategy professionals face a fundamental productivity crisis: They are drowning in information but starving for insights.

The typical executive spends a good chunk of their time manually synthesizing data from multiple sources—earnings calls, market research, competitor intelligence, and regulatory documents—into coherent strategic narratives. This process is not only time-consuming but also prone to human error and inconsistent formatting.

The second critical pain point is context relevance.

Generic report templates rarely match the specific strategic context, audience sophistication, or decision-making requirements of senior leadership. A board presentation requires a different depth and tone than an operational briefing, yet most tools treat all reports the same.

NotebookLM’s custom reports solve this by intelligently analyzing your source content and automatically suggesting the most appropriate report format—whether that’s a strategic memo for board consumption or a concept explainer for team alignment.

How to access: https://notebooklm.google/

NotebookLM’s custom reports can help you:

• Generate context-aware formats: It automatically suggests report templates based on your content type (strategic plans become policy briefs, market research becomes competitive analysis).

• Create executive-ready documents: Transform raw data into briefing docs, strategic memos, concept explainers, and comparative analyses.

• Customize for specific audiences: Tailor tone, depth, and focus areas using the pencil icon customization feature

Examples:

Here are two use cases:

• M&A due diligence intelligence: Involves a comprehensive assessment of acquisition targets, combining financial performance, market positioning, and strategic fit analysis.

Step 1: Upload the target company’s latest four quarterly earnings calls, 10-K filings, and three industry analyst reports

Step 2: Click “Create Report” and select Strategic Memo (perfect for executive decision-making requiring synthesis of complex financial data)

Step 3: Customize focus areas: “market positioning, synergy opportunities, integration risks”

• Why Strategic Memo: It provides an executive summary format with key findings and recommendations that boards expect.

• Competitive threat assessment: Involves analysis of competitor moves, product launches, and market positioning changes that could impact your business strategy.

Step 1: Feed in competitor press releases, product launch announcements, and pricing strategy documents as a source

Step 2: Choose Policy Brief format (ideal for structured analysis requiring immediate action items)

Step 3: Specify audience: “C-suite executives”, and tone: “urgent strategic implications”

• Why policy brief: It delivers concise threat analysis with clear recommendations for immediate strategic response

What makes NotebookLM’s custom reports special?

• Dynamic suggestions: AI analyzes your content and suggests the most relevant report format automatically.

• Source grounding: All insights include citations, ensuring credibility and traceability.

• One-click customization: The pencil icon feature lets you specify audience, tone, and focus areas.

Mint’s ‘AI tool of the week’ is excerpted from Leslie D’Monte’s weekly TechTalk newsletter. Subscribe to Mint’s newsletters to get them directly in your email inbox.

Note: The tools and analysis featured in this section demonstrated clear value based on our internal testing. Our recommendations are entirely independent and not influenced by the tool creators.

Jaspreet Bindra is co-founder and CEO, and Anuj Magazine is co-founder, of AI&Beyond.