From bricks to clicks to AI — the next phase in business evolution

The rise of the digital economy underscores the limitless capacity of innovation. Traditional powerhouses, anchored by tangible products, suddenly began navigating a changed landscape. Bricks transitioned to clicks, and physical products converged with digital services. 

The potential of AI isn't just about implementing algorithms or deploying chatbots. It demands a fundamental shift in mindset. Organizations need to reimagine their strategies, operations, and customer interactions. While these waters may be uncharted, you can use these insights to inspire and guide your AI-driven journey toward a competitive advantage. 

AI as a strategic catalyst 

As businesses integrate AI, it's crucial to focus on areas where the technology can offer exponential rather than incremental value. 

AI is revolutionizing corporate strategies by informing strategic thinking, empowering decision-making, stimulating innovation, and uncovering untapped opportunities. This amplification of human capabilities is ushering in a new era of business growth while redefining industries.

On the functional side, AI is making deep inroads into marketing, sales, and research and development. Marketing teams use AI to create more personalized advertising campaigns that enable the delivery of targeted messages at the optimal time and through the most effective channels, significantly boosting engagement and return on investment (ROI). Predictive lead scoring in sales ensures optimal resource use. Research and development units can use AI for quicker, more precise innovation cycles to deliver products more in tune with market needs. 

Innovation and product development  

AI is transforming business strategies, enabling quicker innovation in product development and service creation while redefining user interactions. 

AI revolutionizes market analysis and innovation by uncovering hidden customer needs, identifying untapped opportunities, and finding and shaping new ways to deliver value. Companies can use AI's generative capabilities and simulations to refine product designs and hasten time to market. Most notably, AI spurs the creation of entirely new product categories: 

• Finance: AI is reshaping the landscape by offering intuitive customer-centric financial services. Using AI can help simplify tax preparation or power digital “assistants” that serve as financial advisors, guiding consumers in maximizing their investments and savings. These advancements can improve customer satisfaction and may offer a competitive edge in a crowded market. 
   
• Healthcare: By thoughtfully combining human-centered AI with precision medicine, healthcare is undergoing a transformative shift. Integrating AI can enhance personalized care, improve patient outcomes, and accelerate drug discovery via generative techniques. These advancements can streamline clinical workflows through decision support, individualized treatment plans, and early disease detection, leading to better medical outcomes. 
   
• Food and beverage: By using AI in product development, food and beverage companies can craft distinctive consumer-centric products that cater to evolving tastes and preferences. This bolsters their competitiveness and fosters a more streamlined, data-driven approach to innovation. 
   
• Entertainment: Popular streaming services use AI to elevate personalized experiences through interactive storytelling. By generating or adapting narratives based on user input in real time, these platforms can keep users more deeply engaged: a feature distinguishing them from traditional media providers. 

In essence, AI is a driving force of innovation, bridging the divide between what businesses offer and what users desire by introducing a spectrum of previously uncharted products and services. 

Market agility 

Staying agile is crucial, and AI provides the tools to achieve this adaptability. It can fundamentally change the way organizations adapt and respond to market shifts in several ways: 

• Market shaping: AI can equip businesses with deep market insights, allowing them to anticipate consumer needs and shift from passively participating to actively shaping the market—thereby securing a position of industry leadership. 
   
• Forecasting: AI empowers organizations to anticipate changes and face uncertainty, using forecasting to predict trends and depict scenarios for strategy development. This helps form a foundation for seizing opportunities, managing risk, and formulating strategies to face uncertainty. 
   
• Real-time adaptation: AI can keep businesses in tune with changing customer preferences and industry trends. Some e-commerce platforms use AI to dynamically adjust their offerings based on user behavior and such external factors as seasonality. 
   
• Supply chain optimization: AI can enhance the capacity of digital twins to make sense of supply chain complexities, enabling them to identify problem areas, make informed decisions, and proactively mitigate disruptions. 

Shaping tomorrow's business landscape 

To help organizations navigate the complexities of the modern business landscape, AI is emerging not as a technological add-on but as a critical component of strategy, agility, and innovation. 

By embracing AI, organizations can gain tools to adapt and lead, identify untapped opportunities, and shape market trends. AI integration may offer organizations a crucial pathway to an unparalleled competitive advantage in this context. 

As AI redefines the boundaries of business productivity, don't just keep up, lead the transformation. Make swift data-driven decisions, automate complex tasks, streamline processes and free up valuable employee time for strategic initiatives. 

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This article originally appeared as sponsored content on hbr.org.