Opinion: Business Leaders Are Still Unprepared for AI

The AI revolution is underway, but many business leaders are not fully prepared for the transformative changes it will bring across industries, potentially leading to the rise of new AI-native titans that could unseat today’s giants.

The current state of AI adoption in business: Many companies are still in the early stages of integrating AI, often simply adding chatbots or natural language interfaces to existing products and services, rather than fundamentally rethinking their business models:

• Tech giants like Google and Amazon have developed chatbots and integrated them into their services, but they have not yet leveraged AI to radically shift the paradigm in online search or shopping in the same way they transformed industries in the early days of the internet.
• Leadership often views AI as merely another tool to help them do things they already do, rather than reshaping what they do entirely, similar to how the internet revolutionized marketing and gave birth to new business models like paid search and online marketplaces.

The potential for AI to disrupt industries: AI has the potential to transform entire business models, industry dynamics, and customer experiences, but many leaders are not thinking big enough about the possibilities:

• Online search, a well-established digital business model, is already being threatened by AI-powered chatbots and large language models that can provide straight-to-the-point answers, reducing the need for users to browse pages of search results.
• Companies like Boston Consulting Group are giving their consultants access to generative AI tools that allow them to solve problems in a fraction of the time it would have taken previously, demonstrating the potential for AI to transform professional services.

Preparing for the AI revolution: To keep up with the coming changes, today’s business leaders must take bold actions to develop an AI-ready workforce and establish robust frameworks for responsible AI:

• Organizations need to proactively address skills gaps and invest in continuous learning to ensure their employees are prepared for the jobs of the future, which will be augmented and enabled by AI rather than replaced by it.
• Companies must develop guardrails and frameworks for ethical, transparent, and responsible AI to ensure that the technology does not cause more problems than it solves.

The rise of new AI-native titans: Within the next five years, younger, AI-native businesses that solve problems eluding even the most technologically-capable enterprises today are likely to emerge, potentially unseating existing giants:

• These new titans will build on the foundations laid by today’s tech giants, such as cloud servers and foundation models, to create new products, services, and business models that are fundamentally AI-driven.
• Their workforces will be fully enabled and augmented by AI, allowing them to take on roles that could not exist without the technology, in line with World Economic Forum predictions that AI will create more jobs than it displaces.

Embracing the AI-driven future: Every company is becoming an AI company, and the most important job facing leaders today is to prepare for this change by thinking big and taking bold actions to embrace it:

• Organizations that survive and prosper will be led by individuals who understand the transformative potential of AI and are not afraid to fundamentally rethink their business models and strategies in light of it.
• Leaders who fail to adapt and continue to view AI as merely another tool risk being left behind, just as many formerly household names paid the price for failing to adapt to the internet revolution at the end of the last century.