Whitecap Consulting director Lal Tawney considers what separates productive AI adoption from genuine competitive advantage, with Milton Keynes-based Clearview Intelligence providing a practical example.
Businesses across Milton Keynes and the wider South Midlands are rapidly introducing artificial intelligence into everyday working life.
Employees are being introduced to Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT and an expanding range of specialist applications. Training programmes are being rolled out and pilot projects are moving into day-to-day operations.
But as access to AI becomes increasingly widespread, simply adopting the technology is unlikely to provide businesses with a lasting competitive advantage.
The more important question for leadership teams is whether AI is helping their organisation make better decisions, improve the customer experience or create greater commercial value.
It is relatively easy to demonstrate increased activity. AI can help people produce content more quickly, summarise information, automate routine work and improve access to knowledge.
Those efficiencies matter. But completing an existing task faster is not necessarily the same as creating additional value.
From our strategy work with organisations across a range of sectors, we increasingly see AI as a leadership challenge as much as a technology challenge.
Training employees to use AI is important, but training alone rarely changes how an organisation operates. Businesses can introduce new tools while retaining the same processes, governance structures and decision-making approaches they had before those tools arrived.
The organisations most likely to realise long-term value from AI will therefore need to think about governance, organisational capability and decision-making alongside adoption.
There are five questions I believe boards should now be asking.
First, where is AI creating genuine competitive advantage rather than simply improving efficiency?
Saving time has value, but sustainable advantage is more likely to come from better customer experiences, stronger decision-making or changes to the way a business creates and delivers value.
Second, which human capabilities become more important as AI adoption increases?
Judgement, creativity, commercial awareness and relationship-building do not necessarily become less valuable because AI is available. In many situations, they become more important because people still need to assess the quality, relevance and consequences of AI-generated outputs.
Third, who is accountable for AI governance, risk and value creation?
Businesses need clear ownership. AI may support an increasing number of activities, but responsibility for how it is used and the decisions made as a result cannot simply be delegated to the technology.
Fourth, how are AI-generated outputs being challenged and validated?
AI can assist decision-making, but leaders remain accountable for the decisions themselves. That means organisations need appropriate checks and controls rather than assuming an AI-generated answer is automatically the right one.
Finally, are businesses measuring the quality of AI adoption rather than simply the volume of usage?
The objective should not be to generate more prompts, deploy more applications or automate as many processes as possible. The objective should be better business outcomes.
One Milton Keynes company putting some of these principles into practice is transport technology business Clearview Intelligence.
AI is being used across different parts of Clearview, from employee productivity and customer engagement to software development.
Rather than treating AI as a standalone solution, the company sees it as a tool that can enhance the expertise and judgement of its people.
Employees are using Microsoft Copilot for activities including meeting notes, summarising information and finding company knowledge more quickly. Product, sales and marketing teams are using tools including ChatGPT to support content creation, presentations, idea generation and visual concepts.
Clearview has found that human review remains important to ensure outputs are accurate, consistent with its brand and appropriate for their intended audience.
The technology is also being used within its development team. Claude and Claude Code are supporting activities including code reviews, security checks, bug diagnosis, design work and assessing potential solutions to technical challenges.
Clearview says using AI alongside existing development skills and processes has increased the speed of some work and allowed employees to devote more time to higher-value activity.
Mikey Cooper, head of technology at Clearview Intelligence, said: “Human oversight is non-negotiable. AI can accelerate many tasks, but accountability remains with our people. Any AI-generated outputs are reviewed through our established quality assurance processes.”
Clearview’s experience illustrates an important point for businesses considering their own approach to AI.
The real value is not simply in adopting the latest tools. It comes from understanding where those tools can improve an organisation, recognising their limitations and combining them with the expertise and judgement of people.
That matters because AI technology is becoming accessible to almost every organisation.
As access becomes increasingly democratised, the technology itself is less likely to remain a sustainable differentiator.
The greater source of AI competitive advantage may therefore lie in how effectively organisations combine artificial intelligence with strong leadership, appropriate governance, industry expertise and sound judgement.
The AI race may be attracting much of the attention. But the organisations that create lasting advantage are likely to be those that also win the leadership race behind it.
About the author: Lal Tawney is a Director at Whitecap Consulting, a strategy consultancy with a presence in Milton Keynes.
