I don't think
#AI is failing, but many AI investments clearly are, because too many organizations still treat AI as a technology deployment rather than a business model transformation.
This is the point we make with
Jeremy Korst in this new
The Wharton School article, and it is something I keep seeing again and again when I work with executives across industries: companies now have AI tools, budgets, pilots, task forces, vendors, training sessions, and impressive demos, but after all of that, the actual business often does not change very much.
Why? Because buying AI is not the same as changing how the company creates, delivers, and captures value. A lot of companies are still using AI to make the old organization a little bit faster: summarize this document, draft that email, generate a report, automate a workflow nobody liked in the first place, and maybe save a few hours here and there.
This is all useful, of course, but it is not
#transformation. The much harder and much more important question is not “how do we add AI to what we already do?”, but rather “what should our business model become now that AI exists?” And this is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable, because now we are not talking about tools anymore, we are talking about incentives, workflows, decision rights, customer experience, risk, talent, middle managers, and sometimes even the basic logic of how the company makes money.
This is why I like the distinction between “bringing AI to work” and “putting AI to work.” Bringing AI to work means giving people access to tools, while putting AI to work means redesigning the business around what AI now makes possible. Very different thing, and much harder.
Middle managers are asked to “drive AI adoption” while still doing their regular jobs, employees are told to experiment but not really given time or permission to change the process, and leaders want productivity gains but often without touching the underlying business model. That math does not work. The winners in AI will not be the companies with the most pilots or the biggest announcements, but the companies willing to ask harder questions about where AI really creates value, where it changes the customer experience, where the value chain should be redesigned, where the risks are too high for automation, and where the business model itself needs to change.
AI strategy cannot just be a technology conversation. It has to be a business model conversation. Join this conversation during our next program with
Wharton Executive Education, "Business Model Innovation in the Age of AI" (see first link).
#AI #BusinessModelInnovation #Leadership #Strategy #Innovation #Wharton
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