Rebecca Murray's Key Ideas from Competing in the Age of AI
by Marco Iansiti, Karim R. Lakhani

• In ecosystems of increasingly intelligent and interconnected machines, value is driven less by individual firms and more by the broader networks they participate in.
• Adopt network-focused thinking, in which success stems from efficiently orchestrating platform-based ecosystems of producers and consumers.
• Move from controlling internal resources to harnessing external networks.

Success requires continuously hypothesizing, building, testing, analyzing, and refining AI-powered prototypes and business models at speed.

Fail fast, adapt, and iterate.

The availability of massive datasets and progress in machine learning vastly accelerate the pace and viability of experiments a company can run.

Instill tight feedback loops and information flows for continuously observing impacts, drawing insights, and immediately applying the learning by publishing findings and altering strategies.

The pace of AI-infused environments necessitates agility, learning, and willingness to self-disrupt. Never stand still.

In environments where value is produced via networks, leverage platform business models that efficiently and intelligently match producers and consumers of value, while also capturing a share of that value for the platform via fees, data accumulation, or other means.

• Build teams encompassing a diversity of AI-related skills including computer science, mathematics, ethics, design thinking, business strategy, change management and more.
• AI progress requires technical prowess combined with humanistic perspectives to produce well-rounded solutions.

• Responsibly monitor jobs at high risk of automation displacement.
• Provide transition support, reskilling/upskilling, severance, and alternative role paths for workers affected.
• Manage societal and enterprise impacts simultaneously.

Instill and operationalize strong humanistic guardrails around ethics, fairness, transparency, accountability and control to ensure the development and application of AI technologies ultimately serve and benefit humanity, rather than threaten it.

Technological progress and humanistic progress must advance hand-in-hand.