Focusing on AI for cost savings yields incremental gains. The transformative value comes from rethinking entire workflows to drive top-line growth. This is achieved by either delivering a service much faster or by expanding a high-touch service to a vastly larger audience ("do more").
Related Insights
The best barometer for AI's enterprise value is not replacing the bottom 5% of workers. A better goal is empowering most employees to become 10x more productive. This reframes the AI conversation from a cost-cutting tool to a massive value-creation engine through human-AI partnership.
Don't just sprinkle AI features onto your existing product ('AI at the edge'). Transformative companies rethink workflows and shrink their old codebase, making the LLM a core part of the solution. This is about re-architecting the solution from the ground up, not just enhancing it.
The true ROI of AI lies in reallocating the time and resources saved from automation towards accelerating growth and innovation. Instead of simply cutting staff, companies should use the efficiency gains to pursue new initiatives that increase demand for their products or services.
Using AI for incremental efficiency gains (10% thinking) is becoming table stakes. True competitive advantage lies in 10X thinking: using AI to fundamentally reimagine your business model, services, and market approach. Companies that only optimize will be outmaneuvered by those that transform.
Most companies use AI for optimization—making existing processes faster and cheaper. The greater opportunity is innovation: using AI to create entirely new forms of value. This "10x thinking" is critical for growth, especially as pure efficiency gains will ultimately lead to a reduced need for human workers.
C-suites are more motivated to adopt AI for revenue-generating "front office" activities (like investment analysis) than for cost-saving "back office" automation. The direct, tangible impact on making more money overcomes the organizational inertia that often stalls efficiency-focused technology deployments.
Coastline Academy frames AI's value around productivity gains, not just expense reduction. Their small engineering team increased output by 80% in one year without new hires by using AI as an augmentation tool. This approach focuses on scaling capabilities rather than simply shrinking teams.
While AI-driven efficiency is an obvious first step, it often results in workforce reduction if company growth is flat. True differentiation and sustainable advantage come from using AI for innovation—creating new products, markets, and business models to fuel growth.
The true ROI of AI isn't just efficiency; it's the opportunity to reallocate time from low-value tasks to uniquely human activities. Use the bandwidth gained to build deeper client relationships, foster community, and engage in creative work.
Go beyond using AI for simple efficiency gains. Engage with advanced reasoning models as if they were expert business consultants. Ask them deep, strategic questions to fundamentally innovate and reimagine your business, not just incrementally optimize current operations.
