Loading...
Loading...
Two very different approaches to incorporating AI into business -- and why the distinction determines your future.
There are two fundamentally different ways to incorporate AI into a business, and most companies are choosing the wrong one. The distinction is between AI-augmented and AI-native, and it is not a matter of degree. It is a matter of kind.
AI-augmented means adding AI capabilities to existing processes. Your customer support team now has a chatbot. Your developers now have Copilot. Your marketing team now uses AI to draft copy. The processes remain human-driven. AI makes them marginally faster. The organizational structure is unchanged. The cost savings are modest. This is where 90% of companies are today.
AI-native means designing processes from the ground up with AI as the primary executor. There is no customer support team -- there is an AI system that handles 95% of inquiries, with a human escalation path for the remaining 5%. There is no development team -- there is a human architect who orchestrates AI agents. There is no marketing department -- there is an AI marketing system that generates, tests, and optimizes content autonomously.
The difference in outcomes is not incremental. It is orders of magnitude. An AI-augmented company might see a 20% productivity improvement. An AI-native company sees a 10x cost reduction and a 5x speed increase. The augmented company still needs 50 employees. The native company needs 5. The augmented company competes on the same playing field as before, slightly faster. The native company competes on an entirely different playing field.
Why do most companies choose augmentation over nativity? Because nativity requires rethinking everything. Every process, every role, every assumption about how work gets done. It is uncomfortable. It threatens existing power structures. It invalidates hard-won expertise. Augmentation is safe. You keep what you have and add a little AI on top. Nobody loses their job. Nothing fundamentally changes.
But markets do not reward safety. They reward effectiveness. And in a market where AI-native competitors can deliver the same output at one-tenth the cost, AI-augmented companies are running a race they have already lost. The question is not whether to go AI-native. It is how fast you can get there.
The transition is not easy. But the alternative -- watching AI-native competitors eat your market while you optimize your chatbot -- is worse.