The most successful organizations will view AI not as a tool for cost-cutting (doing the same with less) but as an expansionary technology. This mindset focuses on using AI to create new products, enter new markets, and dramatically increase scope, rather than just incremental efficiency gains.

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").

Marketers win with AI not by making existing tasks faster, but by using it to unlock new growth opportunities. The focus should be on game-changing programs that drive revenue, rather than on simply achieving incremental efficiency gains.

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.

Wharton Professor Ethan Malek argues that during a technological revolution, using efficiency gains to fire people is a mistake. The winning strategy is to treat AI as a capacity gain, empowering existing teams to innovate and create new advantages that were previously impossible.

The common view of AI is to increase efficiency or replace headcount. A more powerful approach is to maintain your team and leverage AI for abundance. Use it to triple your output, running five marketing campaigns instead of one and exploring numerous variations to dramatically increase growth.

Most view AI for efficiency, but its true power lies in handling routine tasks to free up human talent. This unlocks capacity for strategic, creative, and relationship-driven work that fuels innovation and growth, shifting the question from cost savings to new capabilities.

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.