Series

Strategy in the Age of AI

AI is not merely changing how work gets done. It is changing the conditions under which companies compete and win.

Most organizations do not have a strategy problem because they lack ideas, data, planning sessions, or initiatives. They have a strategy problem because they confuse activity with advantage.

They build roadmaps, approve budgets, launch transformation programs, and add AI pilots. Yet they avoid the harder questions: Where will we compete? How will we win? What must be true for that advantage to hold? What will we deliberately choose not to do?

This series examines strategy as a living theory of how an organization wins—and why that theory must be revisited as AI changes customer expectations, industry economics, operating models, competitor capabilities, and the durability of the moats companies rely on today.

The series

A Plan Is Not a Strategy

Your company may have a full roadmap, a funded budget, and dozens of active initiatives. That does not mean it has a strategy.

Customer Expectations · Industry Economics · Operating Models

Strategy Begins When You Decide What Not to Do

Every company has more opportunities than it can pursue well. Strategy is the discipline of choosing which opportunities deserve a “no.”

Competitor Capabilities · Durability of the Moat

Stop Buying Solutions Before You Name the Problem

When leaders begin with a solution, they often end with an expensive answer to the wrong question.

Operating Models · Customer Expectations

Your Strategy Is Not an Executive Offsite Deliverable

Strategy requires leadership choices. It also requires evidence that leadership teams cannot generate from inside the executive conference room.

Operating Models · Competitor Capabilities

Consensus Is Not a Strategy

When a strategy is designed to offend no one, it often commits the company to nothing.

Operating Models · Durability of the Moat

What Must Be True for This to Work?

Every strategy is a bet. The strongest leaders make the assumptions behind that bet visible before the market exposes them.

Customer Expectations · Industry Economics · Competitor Capabilities

Your Operating Model Is Either Supporting Strategy—or Quietly Defeating It

A strategy does not fail only because the market changes. It often fails because the organization was never built to deliver it.

Operating Models · Competitor Capabilities

Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Your company’s moat may still be real. But AI may have lowered the water level around it.

Customer Expectations · Industry Economics · Operating Models · Competitor Capabilities · Durability of the Moat

Explore by strategic impact

AI may change the basis of competition in more than one way at once. These tags point at where to look — and what to question.

Customer Expectations

AI is raising the baseline for speed, personalization, responsiveness, convenience, insight, and self-service. What customers once considered exceptional may become expected. The strategic question is not simply whether AI can improve service; it is whether your current value proposition will remain compelling as customer expectations rise.

In this series: A Plan Is Not a Strategy Stop Buying Solutions Before You Name the Problem What Must Be True for This to Work? Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Industry Economics

AI can change the cost structure of analysis, content, design, software development, service delivery, marketing, operations, and decision-making. When the cost of producing valuable output falls, margins, pricing, market entry, and business models may change with it. Leaders need to identify which assumptions about cost, scale, and willingness to pay no longer hold.

In this series: A Plan Is Not a Strategy What Must Be True for This to Work? Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Operating Models

AI does not simply automate isolated tasks. It can change how work flows, where decisions are made, what roles require human judgment, how teams coordinate, and how organizations deliver products and services. Companies that add AI to unchanged processes may gain incremental efficiency; companies that redesign the operating model may create a different competitive position.

In this series: A Plan Is Not a Strategy Stop Buying Solutions Before You Name the Problem Your Strategy Is Not an Executive Offsite Deliverable Consensus Is Not a Strategy Your Operating Model Is Either Supporting Strategy—or Quietly Defeating It Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Competitor Capabilities

AI gives competitors—especially smaller, faster entrants—access to capabilities that once required large teams, deep specialist expertise, established infrastructure, or years of process maturity. The relevant question is not merely what your competitors can do today. It is what they may be able to do tomorrow with products, workflows, talent models, and cost structures built around AI from the start.

In this series: Strategy Begins When You Decide What Not to Do Your Strategy Is Not an Executive Offsite Deliverable What Must Be True for This to Work? Your Operating Model Is Either Supporting Strategy—or Quietly Defeating It Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Durability of the Moat

A moat is not a static asset. It is the reason your advantage persists despite competitors’ attempts to reproduce it. AI can weaken moats built on scarce expertise, opaque information, expensive production, complex workflows, or operational scale. At the same time, it can strengthen advantages rooted in trusted relationships, proprietary data, distinctive processes, distribution, and domain-specific judgment—if the company redesigns around them.

In this series: Strategy Begins When You Decide What Not to Do Consensus Is Not a Strategy Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Readiness Diagnostic

Where does your company actually stand?

Ten questions on whether your position grows more defensible — or more commoditized — as AI diffuses across your market. Fifteen minutes, complimentary.

Take the diagnostic