AI belongs in the boardroom: why CEOs must lead the transformation

1. AI Is the new productivity curve

Earlier technology waves were often about optimization, or squeezing out a little more speed or efficiency. AI is different. It enables us to reset the baseline of productivity itself.

Microsoft has recently coined the idea of the Frontier Firm: organizations that fully integrate AI across their entire organization, with AI agents working alongside human employees to reshape work processes and even redefine business models. That vision captures what I see happening with our customers today.

AI allows us to free employees from repetitive tasks, giving them more time and energy to focus on creativity, innovation, and higher-value work. It also gives us the opportunity to accelerate innovation by turning customer interactions into real-time feedback loops for product design, R&D, and go-to-market strategies.

AI also lets us rethink how processes are structured. Traditional workflows were built like waterfalls: step-by-step instructions that assumed everything would go as planned. But reality is messy: disruptions happen and exceptions arise, so processes quickly break down.

AI changes this, because it works more like a modern GPS. Instead of a rigid map, a GPS knows your position, understands the context, and recalculates the best route in real time. Likewise, AI-enabled processes adapt dynamically, always suggesting the best next action.

This shift, from optimization to redefinition, from waterfalls to GPS, is why I call AI the new productivity curve. It doesn’t just make us faster. It makes us fundamentally different.

2. AI touches every role and every process, making it a CEO agenda

Previous waves of digital change were often role-specific: PCs empowered knowledge workers, ERP transformed finance and operations, CRM reshaped sales. Each had impact, but mostly within defined functions.

AI is different. It touches every part of the enterprise: HR, finance, operations, supply chain, services, customer engagement, and innovation. And because it’s woven into the way people work, decide, and collaborate, it inevitably raises questions of responsibility, ethics and regulation. Trust and governance matter with every deployment. 

That is why AI cannot be delegated to IT alone. This is not about systems and servers, it’s about strategy, culture, workforce, and risk. AI belongs in the boardroom, and CEOs must lead from the front.

3. The talent imperative

The smartest people want to work in environments where AI is embedded in daily practice. They want to amplify their intelligence and creativity with the most advanced tools available. If your organization does not offer that, they will go elsewhere.

It’s not that AI is taking jobs. Rather, jobs will be taken by people who use AI. Productivity differences between those who use AI and those who don’t will only continue to grow.

This makes AI part of the employer value proposition. To attract and retain top talent, you need to create an environment where AI is a natural part of how work gets done.

4. Meeting customer expectations with assisted intelligence

Customers today expect interactions that are fast, seamless, and personalized by default. It’s no longer a nice-to-have. However, without AI, delivering on those expectations consistently and at scale is almost impossible.

AI enables companies to scale personalized engagement by surfacing the right knowledge at the right time, so that every customer interaction feels informed, relevant, and consistent. It allows you to replicate the excellence of your best experts across the entire customer base.

But let’s be clear: AI should not replace the human factor. AI may stand for “artificial intelligence”, but I like to consider it more as assisted intelligence. AI provides speed, structure, and insights, while humans add emotional intelligence, empathy, and values. The combination of IQ from AI and EQ from humans is what creates meaningful, trusted customer experiences.

5. The cost of inaction

One of the most dangerous myths is that AI can be postponed until the technology “matures.” The reality is that the cost of inaction is rising every day.

The speed of adoption is unprecedented. ChatGPT reached 100 million users in just two months. Competitors are already embedding AI into their processes, and early movers are already evolving into Frontier Firms. Crucially, they are also compounding their data advantage: AI learns and improves with every interaction, so the companies that start now build momentum that late adopters may never catch up with.

If you wait, you don’t just face higher costs of catching up, you risk being locked out of those opportunities entirely. The gap will widen, and the longer you delay, the harder it becomes to close. As a CEO, you cannot afford to wait to make AI an essential part of your organization.

At 9altitudes, we describe our offer as the digital common thread. We are one of the few partners in Europe that cover the entire digital lifecycle: from product design (PLM, 3D CAD, modular design), through smart manufacturing (IoT, MES), and across ERP and CRM systems, all the way to customer service.

This matters because AI is only as good as the foundation it rests on. Trust and security are essential. If AI is operating on unreliable or siloed data, or if cybersecurity is weak, the risks multiply at scale. By connecting the full digital thread, we ensure that data quality and trust are built in, so that AI can deliver meaningful, reliable outcomes.

That’s why I believe 9altitudes is uniquely positioned to help mid-market companies move toward an AI-enabled future. We do not only help companies identify the right AI opportunities, but we also bring those opportunities to life, by utilizing extisting Copilot functionality, by building AI Agents or through custom AI models that unlock value from data.