🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRhsJswS4iE.
Yep, I’m doing it again. 2025 was another year without a revolutionary technology. There was continued progress with Generative AI (most notably, Claude 3.7 Sonnet and OpenAI o3), but those were solid “second place” type technologies rather than something profoundly life-changing.
2025 was, however, what I hope is the start of re-calibrated Generative AI expectations. As I mentioned back in November on LinkedIn, when I read this article on cio.com, all I could think about was the fact that I am tired of hearing about “AI Strategies.” We are now three years into the Generative AI era, and it should be clear by now that Generative AI is a great tool. But that is all it is: a tool.
Putting a huge amount of work into a “Generative AI strategy” for your organization is like:
- A wood shop having an “impact driver” strategy.
- An electronics firm having a “wave soldering” strategy.
- A pizzeria having a “digital dough press” strategy.
A business needs to have a business strategy. What do your customers need…even if they don’t know what they need? How can you improve or extend your customer experience in new and meaningful ways? AI may or may not be a part of that. But it should not be the lead-in conversation.
If you are seeing what I am seeing these days, not having AI is proving to be a new, next-gen approach to certain aspects of business. I suppose that’s like, well, not using an impact driver as a drill.
If you focus on your business strategies rather than your tool strategies, you are more likely to choose the best tools for each part of your solution. AI might be a nice part of that…or it might not be.
Not every year brings something so profound that it’s worth talking about. The older I get, the more I realize that this is OK.
Here’s to 2026! 🥂
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