AI is rewriting business in real time—and most leaders aren’t ready

With AI capabilities doubling in a matter of months, agility is no longer a competitive advantage for business leaders—it’s now become a survival skill.

“The entire order of companies and the way in which they deliver value, and the entire business models that they have been built on for the last few decades or longer, are being rewritten in front of us,” Peter Smart, chief experience officer and managing partner of the product design firm Fantasy, said during a discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. “The new agility is coherence: Can you create the conditions by which it’s very clear what we do, what the value is that we produce, and how we’re going to get there?”

Those companies that are very rooted in a clear mission and purpose are best prepared to navigate ground that’s constantly shifting, added Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow, the question-and-answer site. Navigating such change requires a mentality shift by leaders embodied by a constant learner mindset and flexible in their point of view, he said.

“You have to be sort of in the trenches with your folks,” Chandrasekar noted. “If you’re not going to embrace doing things differently and being adaptive, then you’re going to be very much in trouble.”

One practical thing that companies can do is to change the incentive structure to reward experimentation and testing, said Sam Jordan, head of computing and technology at Future Today Strategy Group. But leaders must also recognize that when things feel “really chaotic,” it usually means something more fundamental is changing, she continued.

“You have to get really, really disciplined about asking: What is actually changing? What is the thing that’s actually shifting?” Jordan said. “Do not forgo judgment for efficiency.”