Competing in the Age of AI

Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World

By: Marco Iansiti, Karim R. Lakhani

Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen

Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's Summary

In industry after industry, data, analytics, and AI-driven processes are transforming the nature of work. While we often still treat AI as the domain of a specific skill, business function, or sector, we have entered a new era in which AI is challenging the very concept of the firm. AI-centric organizations exhibit a new operating architecture, redefining how they create, capture, share, and deliver value.  

Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani show how reinventing the firm around data, analytics, and AI removes traditional constraints on scale, scope, and learning that have constrained business growth for hundreds of years. From Airbnb to Ant Financial, Microsoft to Amazon, research shows how AI-driven processes are vastly more scalable than traditional processes, drive massive scope increase, enabling companies to straddle industry boundaries, and enable powerful opportunities for learning - to drive ever more accurate, complex, and sophisticated predictions.  

When traditional operating constraints are removed, strategy becomes a whole new game, one whose rules and likely outcomes this book will make clear.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation (P)2020 Gildan Media

Good writing but disappointing reading

I decided to both read this book and reinforce my reading by listening to the audible version.

The book itself is a decent read. It speaks on the success of the top large digitally transformed corporations. The main points of this book are relevant even in the absence of AI. If you read other business books about technology and disruptive innovation, you likely have already come across the same case studies and similar points.

I found the audible reading to be disappointing; several times I stopped wondering whether it was an “AI”/speech-to-text robot, and even went so far as to research whether that was the case. The pausing during sentence pronunciation feels unnatural.

Too slow and no i depth analysis.

No in depth analysis, focusing on uber and airbnb for tve most. Could be one chapter not a book

Great material. Poor performance.

I believe there are some great insights in this book, but I've struggled to get past the first chapter because the narration is so dissonant. Pauses at odd places in a sentence, odd enunciations ( "A broad" read as "abroad" ) and odd emphasis in words. It feels like a not-quite-ready-for-primetime AI-driven text-to-speech conversion vs a live rendition.
That being said, I've taken a number of AI classes and am looking for guidance on how to spot trends and opportunities for my career. This book seems like a great place to start and I will complete it one way or another.
I'll know more once I manage to get through the audio... Or perhaps I'll just buy a paper copy.

Excllent book and contents, Bad narration

Narrator was not good. The narrator just kept going with no excitement. but contents were fantastic

Total disappointment

How can you turn such a hot topic into total boredom? Full of cliches, lacking insights, resembling a piece of bad journalism. Narration perfect for going to sleep. Artificial speech would be more engaging. The whole text feels as if it is computer generated and narrated

A must read on digital transformation

Insightful, thought provoking and visionary. Insiati and Lakhani offer a relevant framework for the Age of AI.

Great intro for understanding how necessary transf

Great listen, but I wish Iwill also be getting a hard copy. This book is useful as a guide to transforming your organzation.

Narration could have been better.

The contents of the book and the presentation is good. It is interesting to learn how the digital world is evolving and how the business are moving forward addressing the challenges of this new connected world.

The primary complaint I have with this book is the narration as the book sounds too digital. What I mean is that it sounds as though it's not narrated by a person but by AI.

Very very high level

Almost no new information on AI really. Like a book report. First book of hundreds I will be returning to amazon.

9 Hours of Buzz Words

This book may have been written by a GPT-3 bot that was trained on buzzwords.

Gets your creative thinking going

And gives many great examples that will get you thinking about how you can apply AI in your own business

Worth a listen - lots of noise

The first chapter can be skipped. It’s essentially the authors selling their services which I didn’t like. I’m paying for insights, not your pitch. The central part of the book does have valuable data and then moves back out to open ended jargon describing the industry, and doesn’t focus on the topic at hand. I would recommend listening to a short 15 minute breakdown of this book rather than the full thing as that’s where your time is better placed - remember it does include content that is worth learning. It’s definitely not worth the time investment for the full thing however.