The Fast Future Blur

Chapter 3Thinking Like an AI Native: A Roadmap for Leaders and Businesses to Understand and Shape AI-Driven Businesses

Hari Abburi and Efi Pylarinou

The Advent of Digital Natives and Customer Centricity

As the world transitioned from linear industrial to digital-native businesses, a key argument by CEOs and Boards for the billions invested in transformations has been the pursuit of customer obsessed, experience-centric brands. Almost 18 years since the start of the Web 2.0 phase that has seen Uber, Amazon and Airbnb become part of our daily lexicon, many traditional linear or industrial companies continue to struggle with their digital transformation.

The fundamental shift in the recent digital transformation era originates from the deployment at scale of real-time data and smart analytics, enabling agile pricing and frequently launching new products and services based on customer-feedback loops. It has also allowed for the successful integration of B2C and B2B worlds into hybrid ecosystems or into successful D2C business models.

The digital-native world has been predominantly marked with the birth of platform business models that stake a claim to fame on offering unparalleled customer choice at a fraction of the cost of a traditional business. We do certainly live in a world where every company needs to think and act like a technology, data and platform business. This has led to almost 90% of the assets in S&P 500 companies becoming intangible.¹

However, it has been more ...