Every sector faces rapid disruption as AI tools are incorporated into workflows. Sooner or later a complex truth will confront leaders: the productivity benefits offered by AI agents or more sophisticated applications of automated reasoning are being commodified. As access to large language models becomes ever more universal, as costs plummet and accelerating advances give anyone benefits that are increasingly indistinguishable from magic, competitive advantage ceases to rely primarily on a company's brand, its distribution channels and IP, its legacy. Instead, as AI assumes an "always available" plug-in role akin to electricity, what will differentiate the breakout companies is talent: their ability to attract, motivate and empower the smartest, most gifted, most creative people. This will require a focus as never before on deliberative organisational culture: the storytelling, signalling and behaviour modelling around the values and purpose that the business represents. That means a continued drive to reinforce the entrepreneurial and human-focused aspects of your organisational culture to best position the company for the uncertainties ahead.

 

David Rowan, founding editor of WIRED UK and author of the bestselling book "Non-Bullshit Innovation", has been studying how exceptional technology businesses, from Stripe to quantum-computing companies, are thinking about organisational culture and the increasing importance of nurturing human skills in an AI-mediated economy. He will share with Tech Show London a framework for nurturing such high-performing teams: reframing the employer's role as a source of continuing learning, and empowering talent at every level of the organisation to be their own "director of innovation". In an age of such relentless technology-led change that unlearning and relearning matters more than learning — when leaders need to be comfortable being uncomfortable — a company needs to invest in storytelling around mindset as much as in technology.