Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World

The authors explore the implications of artificial intelligence for business and how to manage, transform, grow, and control businesses in this context. They detail the implications of the new age of artificial intelligence for strategy and leadership and address the new concept of the firm driven by digital networks and artificial intelligence, with discussion of Ant Financial, Ocado, and Peloton and their business and operating models, digital components, and capacities to drive scale, scope, and learning, and the core aspects of this new type of firm, using Netflix as an example, and the key components of artificial intelligence algorithms that make predictions and influence decisions, the data pipeline that feeds them, and the software, connectivity, and infrastructure involved. They also outline why exploiting artificial intelligence requires a new operating architecture, using Amazon as an example; becoming an artificial intelligence company, with Microsoft's transformation as an example; the strategic implications of the emergence of digital networks and artificial intelligence, including Uber's strategic options, strength, and weaknesses; competitive dynamics; ethical challenges created by the combination of digital networks and artificial intelligence; implications for leaders and the new rules defining this new age; and recommendations for leaders for meeting challenges. Annotation ©2020 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
"AI is the 'runtime' that is going to shape all of what we do." -- Satya Nadella, CEO, MicrosoftAI-centric organizations exhibit a new operating architecture, redefining how they create, capture, share, and deliver value.Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani show how reinventing the firm around data, analytics, and AI removes traditional constraints on scale, scope, and learning that have restricted business growth for hundreds of years. From Airbnb to Ant Financial, Microsoft to Amazon, research shows how AI-driven processes are vastly more scalable than traditional processes, allow massive scope increase, enabling companies to straddle industry boundaries, and create powerful opportunities for learning--to drive ever more accurate, complex, and sophisticated predictions.When traditional operating constraints are removed, strategy becomes a whole new game, one whose rules and likely outcomes this book will make clear. Iansiti and Lakhani:Present a framework for rethinking business and operating modelsExplain how "collisions" between AI-driven/digital and traditional/analog firms are reshaping competition, altering the structure of our economy, and forcing traditional companies to rearchitect their operating modelsExplain the opportunities and risks created by digital firmsDescribe the new challenges and responsibilities for the leaders of both digital and traditional firmsPacked with examples--including many from the most powerful and innovative global, AI-driven competitors--and based on research in hundreds of firms across many sectors, this is your essential guide for rethinking how your firm competes and operates in the era of AI.