I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a simple question: if AI gives everyone access to incredible intelligence, where does competitive advantage come from?
I ask this as someone who loves AI. I use it in nearly every aspect of my business, from coding and analysis to strategizing and research. It has changed how I work, and I suspect we are still in the very early stages of what it will eventually do. But that is also what got me thinking. If I have access to these capabilities, so do you. And increasingly, so do our competitors.
The models will keep getting better. The tools will get easier to use. What feels extraordinary today will eventually become expected. We’ve seen this movie before. Technologies start out as an advantage because only a few people have them. Then access spreads, prices fall, and eventually everybody has them. AI is just getting there very quickly.
So I don’t think the interesting question is, “Should we use AI?” Of course we should use it. The more interesting question is, “What still makes us different when everyone is using it?”
That question has led me to something I’m calling Human-Driven Innovation. It isn’t a rejection of AI. Actually, it is probably the opposite. It is about figuring out what people need to drive so that AI can be used where it has the greatest value.
The Problem with Everyone Getting Smarter
More than a decade ago, I wrote a book called Best Practices Are Stupid. The title was intentionally provocative, but the idea behind it was pretty straightforward. If you copy what everyone else is doing, you might improve, but you probably won’t become different.
There is nothing wrong with best practices when the goal is efficiency or consistency. But if every company studies the same competitors, hires the same consultants, follows the same benchmarks, and adopts the same practices, eventually everyone starts to look alike.
AI can magnify that problem. It is incredibly good at giving us access to what is already known. Ask for a strategy, an idea, an analysis, or a solution and you can get something useful in seconds. But your competitors can ask too.
That is why I don’t think AI decreases the importance of people. I think it increases the value of the things your people can make uniquely yours.
It’s Less About Having the Answer
For years, expertise was valuable partly because experts had answers other people didn’t have. Now answers are becoming cheap. If I can generate 100 possible solutions in a few seconds, the hard part is no longer producing solutions. The hard part is deciding which problem is actually worth solving.
If AI can identify dozens of opportunities, someone still has to decide which ones matter enough to pursue. And if AI can provide different viewpoints, we still need actual people with different perspectives to challenge one another, make choices, and do something together.
AI can help with all of this. I hope it does. But there are certain decisions I don’t think organizations should outsource.
Three Decisions
The first is where do we actually need to be different? Most companies spread innovation everywhere. I think that is a mistake. Some things simply need to work. Some things need to be efficient. And then there are a few things that actually influence why somebody chooses you instead of somebody else. Those are the places where being distinctive matters.
The second decision is what problem are we really trying to solve? I have spent years talking about the importance of the questions we ask. That becomes even more important when AI can give us an almost unlimited number of answers. A great answer to the wrong question is still the wrong answer.
The third decision is who needs to be involved? We tend to surround ourselves with people who think like we do because it is easier. Meetings move faster. There is less friction. But the person who sees the world differently may see something the rest of us are missing. Sometimes the person who drives you crazy is exactly the person you need.
Why I’m Bringing This Together Now
I’ve been working on these ideas for years, but mostly as separate pieces. PIVOTAL is about knowing where to differentiate. Invisible Solutions is about asking better questions. Personality Poker is about getting people who think differently to work together.
But the rise of AI forced me to look at these ideas through a different lens. As more of what we once considered uniquely valuable becomes available through technology, I started asking myself what people bring to the table that becomes even more important in an AI-driven world. That’s when I realized these weren’t three separate ideas. They were three parts of the same philosophy.
That is why I am bringing them together under the umbrella of Human-Driven Innovation.
I’m not suggesting we put humans on one side and AI on the other. That makes no sense to me. Use AI wherever it helps. Let it handle routine work, analyze information, challenge your thinking, and help you move faster.
But the faster the technology moves, the more intentional we need to be about what we want our people to own. Access to intelligence is becoming easier. Being distinctive isn’t.
That is the idea behind Human-Driven Innovation.
Innovate where humans differentiate.
Learn more at HumanDrivenInnovation.com