From Productivity to Connection:
Mastering AI's Dual Impact in 2025

An AI Sprint To The End

In our 30 years of advising brands on leveraging emerging tech, we have never seen such an impactful period as the past month, with generative AI capabilities evolving to incredible levels.

Namely:

• OpenAI launched their "12 Days" campaign of updates, including Sora, a more capable 01 model, enhancements to real-time API performance, and new fine-tuning methods for developers.

• Google’s Gemini 2.0 offers advanced multi-modal capabilities and new agentic experiences that CEO Sundar Pichai describes as something that will, “bring us closer to our vision of a universal assistant.”

• Amazon, Anthropic, Meta, X, and others, announced vast upgrades, making the scope of innovation almost too expansive to list.

These innovations will force brands to reshape marketing, sales, and customer service strategies. While it will take time to fully assess their impact, the ROI and value creation opportunities are already becoming clear.

The Dual Impact of AI Advancements on Organizational Transformation

With these advancements, it is clearer than ever how AI impacts two distinct but interconnected dimensions:

1. Internal Transformation: Use AI to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and break down silos across marketing, sales, and customer service.

2. External Engagement: Understand how customers are adopting AI in their daily lives to redefine how your brand interacts with them (or their agents).

This two-sided equation isn’t new. History shows us that simultaneous business and consumer adoption of transformative technologies leads to dramatic industry shifts. Companies that thrived during these moments, like Amazon and Netflix, excelled at integrating internal innovation with external engagement, setting new industry standards.

Historical Parallels:

• The Internet Boom of the 1990s: Internally, businesses redefined operations with intranets, extranets, and e-commerce websites. Externally, consumers’ shift to online exploration and shopping fundamentally altered expectations for convenience and immediacy.

• The Smartphone Era of the 2000s: Internally, brands harnessed mobile-first strategies for communications and customer experience. Externally, consumers’ always-connected status drove demand for real-time engagement and personalized apps.

• The Social Media Revolution of the 2010s: Internally, companies adopted social listening and community strategies. Externally, consumers shifted to platforms where they could interact with brands and share experiences, creating two-way dialogues.

Reflecting and Reimagining During the Year-End Breather

As 2024 closes, the final weeks offer a rare breather after a hectic selling season. This quieter period is perfect for reflecting on successes and challenges while preparing for AI’s transformative potential in 2025.

Here are Three AI Organizational Impact Questions Leaders Can Reflect On

1. Are We Aligned to Meet the Changing Consumer?

Customer service, sales, and marketing teams must collaborate to adapt to new consumer behaviors. Recently, we implemented automations and AI agents to unify disparate data sources, enabling deeper consumer insights for competitive selling, localized service, and more targeted messaging—all at a cost that wouldn’t have been feasible without AI.

2. Are We Leveraging the Full Potential of AI Technology?

Companies must embrace a mindset shift, viewing AI as a strategic partner rather than just a tool. For example, we have been leveraging a custom-built process that integrates ChatGPT, Perplexity, and NotebookLM in a seamless interplay combining text analysis, advanced voice, audio overviews, and insights from Advisory All-Star Panels—to enhance research and analysis, customer intelligence, and strategic market opportunity identification, augmenting our team with an Agentic one that consistently delivers superior outputs in a fraction of the time and cost.

3. Are We Positioned to Lead in 2025?

Leadership requires the right strategy, talent, and structure to harness AI’s potential. IKEA, for instance, plans to equip 30,000 employees and 500 leaders with AI literacy training, fostering innovation and seamless integration. Similarly, Moderna’s ChatGPT Enterprise adoption resulted in 750 GPTs deployed in two months, with a goal of achieving 100% adoption and proficiency in generative AI within six months.

These real-world examples illustrate the critical importance of aligning executive leadership with cutting-edge techniques and change management.

Reflect. Strategize. Lead with AI.

These final weeks of the year offer a chance to think deeply and prepare for what’s to come. Read our previous editions below and reflect on the questions above, knowing the two sides of the AI equation are deeply intertwined, with success on one side amplifying impact on the other.

We wish all the best to you and your loved ones this Holiday season! We’ll be back with another issue on January 3.

The AI Outcome delivers strategic insights for business, strategy, and marketing leaders in concise reflections designed to inspire action and provoke thought as well as deep-dive, long-form perspectives that uncover opportunities for growth, innovation, and market leadership.

AI is rapidly creating the emergence of leaders and laggards. Let The AI Outcome be your guide to driving growth and transforming markets with AI.