The AI Strategy
Computers, the internet, the cloud. Each one took about a decade to go from a novelty to the way everyone works. AI is on the same path, only faster.
The pattern is the same. Only the tech changes.
Every big shift in tech goes through the same three stages. It's a novelty first, then it's a tool, then it's the default way things get done. AI is moving through that faster than anything before it.
Computers took 23 years to get to the default stage. AI is on track to do it in 8.
AI is in the tool stage now. What it looks like once it becomes the default in your business is something you decide over the next year or two, not the next decade.
Every vendor is embedding AI in their product.
Most are calling the same handful of models you can call directly, with prompts they wrote and connections to their own data. The prompts and the connections are the parts you can own.
Each one's AI lives in that vendor's account.
The tools keep changing. The business shouldn't have to.
Picking the single best AI tool today is a moving target, it'll be a different one in six months. The companies getting this right keep the parts that matter (instructions, knowledge, rules, evaluations) in a place they own.
The four kinds of AI tool
InterchangeableWhat you own
Durable — your strategyStays put when the tools above change. This is what compounds.
What you already run
Existing — already in the businessThree layers. The top changes every year. The bottom was here before AI and will be here after. The middle is where your AI strategy actually lives, and the only piece that has to be yours.
What's your plan for AI?
