Stop Chasing “Efficiency AI.” The Real Value Is in “Opportunity AI.”

We couldn’t agree more: “Companies pursuing incremental productivity gains risk being displaced by AI-native competitors building entirely new business models.”

In our training courses and workshops, we apply McKinsey’s Growth Horizons model and use our own canvas of the same name to distinguish AI innovations with different time horizons:

H1: Adaption of the existing business models. It’s all about optimization of decision making and business processes to increase efficiency.

H2: Transformation into a new business model. AI is used to invent new products and services, which generates new revenue, helps to reach new target groups and gain market share.

H3: Disruption of the industry value chain. It’s better to be the disruptor yourself and reinvent the industry before a start-up puts you out of business.

The article linked below takes a similar approach and compares two categories of AI use cases:

Efficiency AI: the safe path of automating existing workflows and boosting productivity. Think co-pilots, automated summaries, and process automation. These deliver measurable but incremental gains, typically 10-50% productivity improvements in specific tasks. This makes sense as a starting point because it’s ripe ground for experimenting with new technology.

Opportunity AI: using artificial intelligence to solve previously impossible problems and create entirely new business and operating models. This isn’t about doing what you do today, only faster. It’s about making today’s approach obsolete. For senior leaders, this represents both the greatest risk and the greatest opportunity of the digital age.

Most companies focus solely on Efficiency AI, but overlook Opportunity AI. In our words: They focus too much on H1 Adaptation and overlook H2 Transformation and H3 Disruption.

The author concludes with a clear recommendation for action:

“The window for strategic AI positioning is narrowing rapidly. Companies focused solely on efficiency gains will find themselves outflanked by competitors who’ve embraced opportunity thinking.”

Here is the link to this week’s complete good read:

👉 https://towardsdatascience.com/stop-chasing-efficiency-ai-the-real-value-is-in-opportunity-ai/

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why we renamed the method to Data & AI Business Design. We want to emphasize that it is about transforming the entire business with data and AI. So it’s not about implementing individual data & AI use cases, but about coming up with a new, data-driven and AI-powered business model.