How AI Is Changing Strategy: Rethinking What Your Business Is Designed to Do

AI is fundamentally shifting organizational strategy, requiring leaders to move beyond simple productivity automation toward a holistic transformation of business processes. Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at Wharton, argues that relying on AI solely to reduce costs or save time misses the potential for deeper innovation. Instead, organizations should adopt a "leadership, lab, and crowd" model to experiment with AI's capabilities, which now include executing complex, multi-week projects autonomously. This shift toward "conjurer work"—where humans act as managers assigning tasks to AI swarms rather than working alongside them as a "centaur"—demands that leaders cultivate deep domain expertise, refined taste, and the willingness to take risks. Rather than fearing a job apocalypse, companies must leverage AI to redefine their goals, ensuring that human judgment and cultural values remain central to the evolving competitive landscape.