What if the expertise that makes your company valuable today could be replicated—or even surpassed—by accelerating AI within a year?
If you’re running or leading a business, you’re already feeling the pressure: AI disruption is moving faster than your operating model can adapt. This episode helps you understand why the ground is shifting so quickly, what it means for the expertise inside your organization, and how you can stay ahead instead of getting blindsided by competitors who adopt AI more strategically and more rapidly.
You’ll walk away with clarity on:
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How AI is lowering the cost of expertise—and what that means for your competitive advantage.
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A practical way to rethink your business and operating model so you can adopt AI at an exponential pace, not a linear one.
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How to help your team embrace AI without fear by understanding new working modes like centaurs, cyborgs, and self-automators.
Hit play now to learn the specific mindset and moves CEOs are using to turn AI disruption into a strategic edge.
Foundations & Big Shifts in the AI Era
00:45 — Setting the stage: Why AI matters now
Jim introduces the episode’s focus on how AI is reshaping expertise, business models, and the future of work—beyond the hype.
04:10 — Karim’s journey from innovation contests to AI research
Karim shares how his early work with open-source communities and NASA problem-solving competitions led him to discover the emerging power of machine learning approaches.
09:30 — The moment AI became impossible to ignore
He describes seeing machine-learning contest winners outperform NASA’s internal teams, signaling a seismic shift in how organizations could access expertise.
13:55 — Architectural disruption: Why big companies struggled to adapt
The conversation explores how companies like Nokia and GE missed technological transformations because they were optimized for old operating models.
The New Playbook for Leaders in an Accelerating AI Landscape
22:10 — AI lowers the cost of expertise
Karim explains that AI isn’t just a technology—it fundamentally reduces the cost of producing expertise, altering how value is created and where competitive advantage comes from.
26:45 — Why adapting linearly won’t work in a world of accelerating AI
Here Karim warns CEOs that expertise-driven technologies are improving exponentially; adopting them slowly means falling exponentially behind.
29:40 — The learn–do–imagine–act–care framework
Kareem outlines a practical leadership roadmap for experimenting with AI, reimagining work, driving organizational change, and supporting employees through identity shifts.
33:20 — Humans+AI: The rise of centaurs, cyborgs, and self-automators
He describes the three distinct ways professionals are integrating AI into their workflows—and how the most effective users work with the jagged, uneven frontier of AI capability.
36:55 — Emotional fallout: Why AI can feel like “junk food” to high performers
A surprising finding from Karim’s research: many elite employees initially feel devalued by AI because it challenges their identity as experts.
42:15 — Senior leaders must adopt AI themselves
The episode closes with a powerful point: juniors can’t teach seniors how to work in an AI-powered world—leaders must experience accelerating AI firsthand to build judgment and drive transformation.
About Dr. Karim Lakhani
Karim R. Lakhani is the Dorothy & Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He specializes in technology management, innovation, digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI). His innovation-related research is centered around his role as the founder and co-director of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard and as the principal investigator of the NASA Tournament Laboratory. Karim is known for his original scholarship on open source communities and innovation contests and has pioneered the use of field experiments to help solve innovation-related challenges while simultaneously generating rigorous research in partnership with organizations like NASA, Harvard Medical School, The Broad Institute, TopCoder, The Linux Foundation and various private organizations. His digital transformation research investigates the role of analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in reshaping business and operating models. This research is complemented through his leadership as co-founder and chair of the The Digital, Data, and Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard and as co-founder and co-chair of the Harvard Business Analytics Program, a university-wide online program transforming mid-career executives into data-savvy leaders.