When we update our 3-Year Picture on the V/TO, how should we project our margins and strategic positioning if AI reduces our fulfillment costs but industry pricing begins to commoditize?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee point out that as artificial intelligence makes machine-generated prediction and content cheap, uniquely human skills like judgment, contextual reasoning, and emotional reassurance become far more valuable. If you plan your 3-Year Picture around selling generic deliverables faster and cheaper, you are voluntarily entering a race to the bottom.

When detailing What Does It Look Like in your 3-Year Picture on the V/TO, anticipate that baseline fulfillment will commoditize. Clients will not pay you premium rates for work an algorithm can generate in thirty seconds. Instead of passing all operational savings directly into price cuts, strategically reallocate your capacity toward high-touch advisory, risk management, and outcome ownership.

Your 3-Year Picture should reflect gross margin expansion driven by internal operational leverage, coupled with value-based pricing rather than hourly billing. Project a business model where AI does the heavy lifting on research, data crunching, and initial drafting, while your senior talent focuses exclusively on interpreting results, guiding client strategy, and guaranteeing execution.

This fundamentally alters your positioning. In three years, your company should not look like a high-speed production shop. It should look like an elite advisory and delivery firm that uses proprietary AI workflows to deliver institutional-grade certainty. That is the kind of business that commands premium pricing and attracts serious strategic buyers.