The Next Phase Of AI: Companies Must Tie It To Creating Value — Not Features Or Optics

Many organizations are investing heavily in digital tools but struggling to see returns in customer impact or productivity. Strip away the buzzwords, and transformation comes down to one thing: how you create and deliver value.

That means rethinking what you offer, how customers experience it, and howyour organization operates behind the scenes. It might involve redesigning processes, shifting to recurring models, or building entirely new capabilities. But the throughline is simple: make things easier, more relevant, and more human.

Transformation isn’t something you do to the business. It’s something you do with it: start with customers and employees, then align technology, processes, and leadership around that reality.

Staying where you are can feel safe. In markets defined by speed and experience, it’s often the riskiest move.

The first phase of AI was about speed, features, and optics. The next phase is about outcomes. Most companies aren’t ready for that shift.

Disruption as a growth lever

Disruption is often framed as loss — layoffs, cannibalization, decline. That’s incomplete.

Handled correctly, disruption is a growth lever. It simplifies, sharpens, and creates space for new value.

AI plays a role, but it’s not the story. Transformation is about how a system of technologies: AI, automation, data, and intelligent workflows changes how value is created and delivered.

AI doesn’t replace people. It reorients them. It removes friction and creates space for higher-value work.

“AI-Washing” — window dressing instead of meaningful integration

AI is now the headline of nearly every pitch, deck, and roadmap. That has created a new problem: AI-washing.

Companies label products as “AI-powered” without making any meaningful changes. It’s a shortcut to signal innovation.

Customers are catching on. They can tell the difference between thoughtful application and surface-level labeling. When the experience is clunky or irrelevant, they don’t blame the implementation. They blame the brand.

AI-washing occurs when technology is disconnected from outcomes.

Real strategy starts with clarity: What problem are you solving? Who benefits? What actually changes?

The best AI is often invisible. It simplifies decisions, anticipates needs, and removes friction without calling attention to itself. That’s where trust is built.

AI is not a shortcut. It depends on clean data, thoughtful design, and alignment to a defined outcome. Without that, it becomes digital theater.

Leadership owns this. It can’t be delegated or labeled into existence.

Separating the tectonic from the trendy

Every wave of innovation brings pressure to chase what’s new. Not all innovation is equal.

Some shifts are tectonic. They redefine how value is created, delivered, or captured. Others are ripples, visible, sometimes exciting, but ultimately shallow. In my book, we walk through examples, and I provide a workbook for leaders to identify tectonic shifts versus ripples in their own work.

AI, applied correctly, is tectonic. It changes how decisions are made, how work flows, and how customers are served. It opens new capabilities and new ways of competing.

But when leaders follow hype instead of context, the results are predictable. Resources scatter. Expectations outrun execution. Credibility erodes.

The question isn’t whether something is new. It’s whether it matters.

Does it change the operating model?

Does it reduce meaningful cost?

Does it improve experience in a way that drives loyalty or performance?

Does it create new revenue?

If not, it’s noise.

Modernization is a system you build, not a feature you add

Modernization starts with intent, not technology.

It shows up in how leaders think, how teams operate, and how systems evolve. Progress stalls when organizations try to accelerate old models. It accelerates when they redesign how value is created.

The strongest companies challenge assumptions. They move from linear processes to connected systems, from rigid roles to shared accountability, from perfection to learning velocity.

AI adds power, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals.

Systems win when they combine human judgment with intelligent automation, personalize value at scale, and build trust over time.

The companies that win won’t be those that adopt AI fastest. They’ll be the ones who align it to how they create value.

About Matt Domo

Matt Domo, author of Everybody Wins: The Business Leader’s Mission Possible Guide To AI Success, is an enterprise AI advisor and global keynote speaker who helps leaders turn digital vision into clear strategy, alignment, and measurable business outcomes. As Founding GM of the AWS Database Division, he built the team and launched the first cloud-native database services, helping define the modern Database-as-a-Service category. He later led engineering for SQL Server Enterprise at Microsoft and contributed to the development of the first open-source cloud at Rackspace. His work has supported organizations including the United Nations, Verizon, HP, Southern Methodist University, and the U.S. Space Force. He has been recognized by MSN as a Top AI Leader to Follow and by USA Today as a Top Visionary Entrepreneur.