What if the gap between shipping AI and seeing it move your business has nothing to do with how fast you’re moving?
What if the gap between shipping AI and seeing it move your business has nothing to do with how fast you’re moving?
Your board, your investors, the conference you just attended - they’re right about the urgency. They’re wrong about the prescription.
You’ve moved. You’ve shipped AI features, hired the talent, run the pilots. The effort is real - and the metrics aren’t responding. Not because you moved too slowly. Because you moved without knowing where the pull is.
Most of the AI advice in your world right now is supply-side thinking - here’s what AI can do, here’s what your competitors shipped, here’s what the technology enables. That’s pushing a rope. It feels like progress because the team is busy and the board sees motion. But motion isn’t movement.
The companies where AI is actually working started from the other end. They found what their customers need now that the ground has shifted - needs that couldn’t be met before, or needs that were met by human expertise and can now be met differently. They found the pull first. Then they built to it.