Industry leaders are pulling ahead – here’s how AI is reshaping the competitive landscape
The frontrunners of the AI era are already reaping significant benefits from their investments, and the gap between them and those who hesitate is widening, perhaps permanently. But the biggest productivity leap will only happen once companies scale development from individuals and teams to the entire organisation, reshaping value streams and redefining how humans and AI create value together, Niina Uusi-Autti writes.
Our recent survey conducted this autumn among major Nordic companies shows that 45 percent of respondents have already gained a competitive edge with AI. These early movers share a striking optimism: an open mindset toward AI’s potential and a curiosity-driven culture of experimentation that has pushed them far ahead in practical adoption. They’ve built their understanding of AI through hands-on work, while also establishing strategic clarity on where to focus their investments.
Meanwhile, more than half of respondents, the wait-and-see group, are still hesitating. They risk falling permanently behind. AI will inevitably reshape value creation across industries. Market disruption creates discontinuity, and the traditional formula for profitable growth may no longer work. For those who wait, warning signs will emerge slowly: results start slipping while frontrunners win customers over.
Want to know how to become AI-first? Download our market study “What a successful organisation looks like in the AI era”.
From AI-assisted to AI-driven organisations
The leading companies of the AI age have a few things in common. They are guided by visionary leaders who understand AI’s strategic potential and have set their organisations in motion on their AI journey. Having learned through experimentation, they’ve already shifted from isolated AI projects to business-led development. Their ambition is nothing less than to redefine the organisation’s core value chains. They are also deeply engaged with the third wave of AI, where AI agents take on tasks that previously required a human.
This shift isn’t merely technological: it transforms how companies operate, how work is structured, and how value is created. These frontrunners have already invested heavily in developing skills and role-based learning paths that democratise AI use across the whole organisation. Instead of a tool, AI becomes a new digital colleague – one that must be trained and onboarded just like us human employees.
At best, we can train an AI agent to perform tasks at the level of our most seasoned experts. An agent can show what a high-quality project plan or business case should look like, raising even a junior employee’s performance to senior level. This opens enormous opportunities to solve the unemployment challenge faced by many highly educated young people.
From corporate success to national competitiveness
The competitive edge of an AI-driven organisation becomes evident both in customer-facing work and operational efficiency. With AI agents embedded across the entire customer journey, companies can understand their customers more deeply and offer highly personalised service, anytime and anywhere. According to our new study, frontrunners are now moving into the scaling phase.
Once agents are widely deployed and integrated into business platforms, they can autonomously handle an ever-growing set of increasingly complex tasks alongside humans and other digital co-workers. Eventually, a company’s value creation can be decoupled from human working hours, which marks a profound shift in productivity. AI won’t replace people, in my view, but it will free experts from routine tasks so they can focus on higher-value work.
Here too, first movers hold a decisive advantage. Those who harness scalable AI benefits early will rapidly gain such a technological and business lead that laggards may never catch up. How do you compete when your rivals have rewritten the rules of the game?
This is not just about corporate profitability – it is a question of national economic competitiveness. Finland’s productivity has stagnated for more than a decade. Can we afford to wait any longer? As a small economy, we must be inventive in finding new sources of growth and new ways to compensate for the talent shortage caused by our ageing population. AI offers solutions to both challenges, we just need the courage and optimism to act.
Niina Uusi-Autti is a digital business professional and business leader with broad experience in digital transformation, developing digital business, and utilising data and AI as part of both business operations and leadership. At Sofigate, Niina leads strategic renewal and the development of new capabilities as a member of the company’s executive team.
Download the market study “What a successful organisation looks like in the AI era”
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