Existential Innovation

The impact of AI will be personal and profound. The Web changed how we work; AI promises to change what work means.

Energized yet unnerved by AI, business leaders navigate an unpaved path filled with potholes and pitfalls. At times, overhyped tech underperforms. More often, the absence of a playbook to navigate change so radical preordains the outcome.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang planted the proverbial flag on the hill when he said ‘in a lot of ways, the IT department of every company is going to be the HR department of AI agents in the future”. This highlights a fundamental shift - AI isn’t just a tool, it’s an entity requiring governance, strategy, and a rethinking of organizational structures.

In the mid-90s when HTML and Hotmail reigned, Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail” was the playbook we needed. He separated “Sustaining Innovations” where companies improve existing experiences for current customers, from “Disruptive Innovations” where transformative technologies allowed companies to create new markets and serve overlooked customers.

Sustaining innovation helps you be first amongst equals. Disruptive innovation creates a moat and displaces your nearest competitors. But AI hits different. We are entering a new era which demands “Existential Innovations”.

Existential innovations challenge the very foundation of industries. They are inevitable and irreversible, forcing companies to redefine their purpose, reshape their workforce, and reimagine the markets they serve.

We won’t uncover transformative opportunities by merely embedding AI into existing job structures. Instead, a comprehensive diagnostic of our entire ecosystem - every action and interaction - will reveal where automation can replace manual tasks, when AI can augment human performance, and how our purpose must evolve as more complex jobs are completed autonomously.

Existential innovations have had early impact in fields as diverse as the creative arts to medicine. Beyond AI’s current marvels lies a more pressing reality - its ethical, safety, and societal implications will define the future as much as its capabilities.

The unabashed ambition of foundational AI models to achieve Artificial General Intelligence means we’re going to be testing and learning for a while. The potholes and pitfalls will persist. But a handful of business leaders will find a path forward. They’re likely the ones who’ve realized it’s not the Model, it’s the Mindset.