The word “disruption” is usually associated with technology substitution that offers a better way of accomplishing a given task. But its more profound realization is in ecosystem transformation that rewires and resets the boundaries across the old silos. This distinction is crucial in confronting the impact of generative AI.
GenAI Could Transform How Health Care Works
The paradigm shift is instructive to other industries, too.
November 27, 2023
Illustration by Carlo Cadenas
Summary.
Consider how Napster, the networked file sharing system, upended the music industry. The emergence of generative AI language models like ChatGPT, has much in common with this Napster-initiated inflection point: a breakthrough technology with breathtakingly fast adoption, appropriation of other people’s data (OPD), and predictions of doom and obsolescence. Similarly, the generative AI revolution that ChatGPT has catalyzed is not going to be reversed. Leaders should look to three touchstones to calibrate their strategies and prepare for the transition: First, distinguishing between the role of AI in driving technology substitution and its role in ecosystem transformation. Second, preparing for the new organizational design challenges that will arise because of this ecosystem transformation. And third, crafting strategies that take advantage of new asymmetries that arise from new combinations inside and outside your own organization.