Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World Illustrated Edition

Competing in the Age of AI is an overview of the changing business landscape with competition from digital operating models. We are certainly living in a time of change of historic proportions and business models are changing rapidly and achieving enormous scale with completely different resources than in previous eras. Business school professors Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani discuss the changing nature of competition and provision of services in this new world and make clear that changes to business operating environments will be the norm and all businesses need to adapt to the new environment or face marginalization. It is readable, intuitive and at times provovative; definitely timely given the acceleration of change due to Covid.The authors start by discussing how operating models adopting AI and use of algorithms on datasets to drive business decisions is changing the business landscape and has completely different economies of scale. The authors talk about the nature of the value add of the firm and how traditionally business models have diminishing returns to scale at certain points while business models focused on AI and larger data sets to drive greater efficiency have positive learning effects from the scale of the business. The authors then discuss with a multitude of case examples how new operating models work and how software integration across business verticals is a pre-requisite for scale. The authors give anecdotes from Amazon, Alibaba, Netflix and Microsoft to give substance to the strategic decisions that went into addressing operating challenges that were inevitably part of migrating businesses from traditional operating models to one based on driving efficiency through use of algorithms on customer data. The authors discuss what needs to occur to make these changes for any given firm and the institutional challenges that come with such architecture changes at the core. The authors describe how digital business models are encroaching on traditional businesses which are completely unprepared for the level of competitiveness that would come from digital operating models. The authors discuss the variety of competitive advantages that can arise in digital operating models. They describe various network effects and learning effects that one should focus on, they describe the lack of certain scales in particular operating models like UBER that differ from the scale effects in AirBNB. The authors give a good overview of how to think about monopolization potential of business and operating models and the paths to profitability prior to the scale benefits being in place. The authors end with a discussion of the challenges of digital operating models when it comes to influence and bias. The current political environments show this in abundance but the authors describe the issues with Cambridge Analytica to focus on deep problems that come from harvesting data with the goals of influencing. No real solutions are provided other than some discussion on the need for businesses to understand their social responsibility (good luck).Competing in the Age of AI is an excellent overview of how digital operating models are disrupting and scaling in so many places. They describe how firms can potentially adapt by changing their own operating models and they describe when such operating models are more and less likely to succeed. Certainly this is just a heuristic overview but the lessons are valuable and the discussions they provide of real businesses give good case studies to think about. I don't believe the policy discussion is particularly useful or realistic but this is not an economic policy book it is a business school book. In the description and analysis of the changing landscape for business, this book does well for the reader.

One of the best books I’ve read in recent years. I just re-read it and learned as much the second time around as the first. It is packed with brilliant insights, yet it is written in an accessible style. Remarkably for a business book, while it has ample case studies, these don’t water down the core insights or take away from the analysis. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the changes underway as a result of technology.

Gives you good coverage on enterprise history, theories, strategies, and general guidelines. Won’t find concrete ideas for AI projects if that’s what you are looking for. I skimmed mostly and read the parts that were interesting to me. For example: how Amazon and Microsoft embraced the cloud, APIs and AI to transform themselves.

I just finished reading the book “Competing on the age of AI” by Professor Marco Iansiti and Professor Karim Lakhani. It is a very intense, but easy to read, book about “strategy and leadership when algorithms and networks run the world”. If we want to understand what top, successful and unsuccessful, companies are doing and how they are using artificial intelligence, two sided network effects and technology to their development this is the right reading.I had the chance of attending Professor Lakhani’s classes at Harvard Business School and heard some of the examples cited in the book with his enthusiasm and good humor in person. The book brings it all to order and shows the only path to take: embrace AI and transform the way we work and develop our businesses.Should we be digital experts or just curious about AI, its mandatory reading.The book opened my mind on this topic, it will contribute to my job as an executive in my company, and to the Sales & Marketing classes I teach in AESE Business School.Great book.

The book gives practical examples and provokes one to think of ways in which AI (particularly Weak AI as defined in the book) is already enabling firms to disrupt industries from fintech to transportation. This isn't about scary AI that is going to take over the world like Skynet, but rather lays out a framework for any company to develop a Weak AI factory to outperform competitors. Perhaps most importantly, it discusses how proficiency in establishing an AI factory is rather industry agnostic and therefor enables firms to compete in new markets. If you are a senior leader or aspire to be one, this book is definitely worthy of your time.

This is an insightful book on the new era of the AI-enabled world of digital networks in the economy. It defines the new digital organization that’s emerging and the key concepts to think about this transformation that we are living in and what is coming, the possibilities with its opportunities and risks. It has keen chapters on network effects and their implications.Finally, with a great finish, it outlines the leadership and management challenges we must address as human beings to thrive, calling for urgent optimism to take action. It encourages us to form communities of like-minded people to try to influence positively and ensure the human alignment of this future that we are creating together with the co-intelligence of AI.