The Need for Vision

Artificial intelligence and the changing sources of competitive advantage

“…With regard to substitution, machine capabilities have also become an alternative to humans' decision making and problem solving capabilities in business contexts such as consumer products, finance, healthcare, and insurance. This trend is likely to continue, “since [the] human/machine performance gap will only increase” (Davenport & Kirby, 2016, p. 20). In line with our results, AI experts also do not expect this new technological resource's abundant availability to provide a sustainable advantage.…”

“…In line with our results, AI experts also do not expect this new technological resource's abundant availability to provide a sustainable advantage. For example, Davenport and Kirby (2016, p. 204) expect companies' cost advantages from cognitive task automation to erode quickly, since competitors could simply imitate these automation strategies.…”

“…For example, human resource experts can do so by assessing candidates' cultural fit and convincing them to work for their firms (Hook, 2017), while product designers do so by making sense of customers' problems (Verganti et al, 2020), and portfolio managers by providing creative investment ideas and selling them to investors (Marriage, 2017). Davenport and Kirby (2016, p. 204) therefore speculate that such human augmentation capabilities, which complement AI‐based machines' capabilities, could be a new source of competitive advantage.…”

“…To develop new complementary resource bundles, humans must have a flexible ability to go beyond domain‐specific expertise when structuring, bundling, and leveraging resources (Sirmon et al, 2007). Since humans develop their expertise in a path‐dependent learning process (Helfat & Peteraf, 2015), domain experts, who have focused their limited attention and resources on building domain‐specific capabilities, usually have little general data science or augmentation capabilities (Davenport & Kirby, 2016, p. 189). Applied to our domain, this means that computer engineers initially have, and—due to their path‐dependent learning—continue to have, an edge over traditional chess players with regard to human–machine capabilities.…”

“…Artificial intelligence (AI) enables machines to perform cognitive functions previously only associated with human minds (Rai, Constantinides, & Sarker, 2019). Management scholars surmise that AI changes the sources of competitive advantage (Daugherty & Wilson, 2018, p. 214; Davenport & Kirby, 2016, p. 204), but offer contrasting views on how this change occurs. Some assume that AI substitutes humans' cognitive capabilities (Balasubramanian, Ye, & Xu, 2021) when, for example, machines replace bankers in equity investment (Noonan, 2017), stand in for managers in talent recruitment (Chamorro‐Premuzic, Polli, & Dattner, 2019), and take over from physicians in medical treatment (Blakely, 2020).…”