The hype around generative AI and digital transformation has led many organisations to ask the wrong question: "What is the business value of this IT investment?" But the real gap is not in IT. It is in the business. It's time to talk about the IT value of business.
Too many top leadership teams and management boards ask what AI can do for them, without asking what it might demand of them. That gap in perspective is a dangerous asymmetry when the digital cognitive revolution can make irrelevant even the largest and most established organisations. Generative AI is not just a technology — it's a cognitive partner. One that thrives in environments where ambiguity is embraced, silos are dissolved, and human intelligence is seen as a multiplier, not a bottleneck.
So let's stop pretending the bottleneck is IT. The bottleneck is the business's capacity to absorb, adapt, and reconfigure itself around new capabilities. IT didn't create the silos. IT didn't design the legacy processes. IT didn't hoard the data. The business did. And now the business wants IT to produce a "business value" spreadsheet to justify cleaning up a mess that the business created.
Innovation happens when people are free to act on their insight. AI can support that — but only if we're willing to change how we work, not just what tools we use. The question isn't "What's the ROI of this AI project?" It's "Is your organisation ready to let go of control, make peace with ambiguity, and empower people to think, interpret, and iterate?"
If your organisation is still writing its digital strategy in a vacuum, stop. Start by asking: what do we fear, what do we value, what are we ready to let go of? AI won't give you answers to those questions — but it will reflect the clarity (or confusion) with which you ask them.
And that reflection, more than any business case, determines success.
This article is adapted from "You Don't Need an AI Strategy! Here's Why" and subsequent writing by Paul Devalier.