AI's value moved from models to workflows - where organisations should focus
AI's value moved from models to workflows - where organisations should focus
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott recently described today's AI models as already "way more powerful than what people are using them for." The challenge now isn't building more capable systems but learning to apply the ones we have.
That points at something organisations are only beginning to recognise: the most interesting AI companies are no longer model companies. They're infrastructure companies, agent builders, and workflow orchestrators - and the labs themselves now build as much agent infrastructure as new models.
The first paradox. AI's value is growing faster than ever, yet the models creating that value are becoming less differentiated. Choosing a model is starting to feel like choosing a cloud provider: important, rarely decisive.
So how can value keep growing if its presumed source is losing its distinctiveness? It has moved sideways. The differentiator is the system layer around the model: orchestration, execution environments, integrations, memory, evaluation.
The second paradox. When the models were scarce or costly, access was the bottleneck. Now that they're within everyone's reach, the bottleneck shifts to judgment: the question is whether an organisation can name the workflows where repeated decision-making slows the business down. That's a strategic question, not a technical one. Ownership of that workflow question is often unclear. It sits between engineering and business leadership, and answering it needs both views at once.
The third paradox: the best agent implementation is often boring. It solves a simple, repetitive point in everyday work. Activity is not value — more agents and more tokens produce motion without progress. What determines AI's value isn't the model but the point in the workflow where it's connected.
Where in your organisation does repeated decision-making slow the business down the most? And who understands those workflows well enough to answer?
#AIStrategy #Workflows #EnterpriseAI #HavuAI
Marko Paananen
AI consultant and builder with 20+ years in digital business development. Helps companies turn AI potential into measurable business value.
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