Is AI Incremental or Existential?
Is AI incremental, or existential?
Being privy to both a growing number of “AI Strategy” conversations, and a not insignificant period of study of AI disruption strategy, I’ve begun to question whether much of C-Suite leadership is asking the right questions.
We seem stuck at “How do we use AI to improve what we already do?” However, if the last month is anything to go by, the more relevant question really should be, “What if AI makes what we do irrelevant?”
While we chase marginally incremental percentages in efficiency or improvement in today’s processes, someone else is reinventing the model entirely and unlocking outcomes that are ten times greater. While we may be using AI to make customer service faster, another is removing the need for customer service altogether.
While we may be optimising supply chains, others are building supply systems that operate on completely different principles.
I understand that because this is all really new territory, the CTO/CDO/CMDO or MD is under pressure to demonstrate both strategy and results, and so these incremental figures serve great for Board reporting purposes. It’s a good strategy for “show working” and “justify your inclusion” purposes. But it’s not a winning strategy.
The real risk is playing the wrong game.
This moment requires leadership to surround themselves with minds that can reimagine from first principles, scan far beyond their own industry for threats, and treat AI as a tool for rewriting business models, not just improving them. It requires cultures that can adapt as quickly as the technology itself. It requires people who may not be cut from the organisation or perhaps even industry cloths. People who can look in and connect patterns. People for whom curiousity, innovation, disruption, tech and creativity (potentially with a hint of rebellion) are second nature.
It may also require something very new: an EDGE team or lead – a CAIO if you will – whose sole job is to sit on the fringes of the organisation, look both into, and beyond the incremental, in order to interrogate where the next wave of disruption will come from, and force the organisation to disrupt itself before it is disrupted.
This is a person or team who’s equipped and licensed to execute on the CEO/MD/Board’s mandate. A person or team whose entire job is to make their own roles irrelevant in 3–5 years.
Boards must actively begin to put one simple question on the table at their next retreat: Are we optimising an old game, or are we preparing to lead a new one?
A strategy to design a more ergonomic horse-drawn carriage is nice for the moment, but I’m afraid Mr. Ford’s building a car.
Thoughts inspired by the ever brilliant Zoe Scaman.
Until next time,
Spyda