Imagine the AI-native competitor.
Start with the customer and the job they need done. Visualise how a new entrant might solve it if it could design the proposition, experience and business from scratch with AI built in.
AI strategy · business redesign · leadership teams
Build your competitor – the one that could beat you.
Most AI conversations start with the business you already have. I help leadership teams start somewhere else: with the customer, what AI now makes possible, and the business you would build if you were starting today.
30 yearsturning technology shifts into business capability
2× founderbringing start-up product thinking to established businesses
CEO, TheAX.aibuilding AI-native diagnostics and operating methods in practice
Outcome-ledlinking AI and operating-model change to measurable results
The problem
01Beyond productivityAI has made work faster. The business hasn’t moved with it.
So far, AI has mostly gone into the business as it is: faster research, faster analysis, more automation and more productive people.
That is useful. But it does not necessarily change what the business sells, how it scales, how customers experience it or where its margin comes from.
UK evidence
Productivity is showing up faster than commercial value.
3 in 4
AI adopters report higher productivity.
75% of AI-adopting firms1 in 8
AI adopters report higher revenue.
12%. 77% report no revenue change yet.Read the full argument
Download (PDF) ↓Beyond productivity: Build the business AI makes possible. The evidence, competitive shift and leadership questions behind this approach.
02The competitive implication
The threat isn’t a rival using more AI. It’s one designed differently because AI exists.
A new entrant does not have to preserve your products, processes, structures or economics. It can start with the customer problem and design around what AI now makes possible.
That is where a different customer experience, lower marginal cost, new commercial models and a more scalable business can come from.
You have advantages a new entrant cannot easily copy. But they will not be enough if the basis of competition changes faster than your business does. There is still time to respond – but the window to do it from a position of strength is narrowing.
03A different starting point
Don’t start with “What is our AI strategy?” Start with the customer.
Don’t start by brainstorming AI use cases either. Both questions begin with the technology: where can we use it, what can we automate, which use cases should we prioritise? That keeps the thinking inside today’s business.
An AI-native competitor would not ask either question. It would ask: What problem are we solving for the customer, and what is the best business we could build to solve it now that AI exists?
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.”
AI strategy, technology choices and use cases should follow from the business you decide to build – not define it.
To compete with an AI-native entrant, your leadership team needs to think the same way.
AI Clarity Session
That is what the AI Clarity Session is designed to do.
I help your leadership team visualise the AI-native competitor that could beat you. That gives you a way to step outside today’s assumptions and see what a business designed for this new environment might look like – and, from there, work out what your own business needs to become.
Bring your business back in.
Compare that future with your business today: where would the competitor create more value or remove friction, and where do you already have advantages it cannot easily copy?
Start defining what you need to become.
Use the comparison to identify what needs to change in your business, the capabilities that matter most and where to act first. The half day stops at clarity; the full day continues into an actionable roadmap.
From insight to change
Visualising the competitor shows what could be different. AX helps identify what has to change.
AX (Accelerated Experience) gives the leadership team a practical way to compare that future with the organisation you have today and identify the capabilities that will determine whether the future you have imagined is actually achievable.
Customer & Direction
Start with the jobs and outcomes customers need, not the products and processes you already have.
Create enough clarity of intent for people to make good decisions without detailed instruction.
Technology, Data & Execution
Design the business around what people, AI and digital systems can now do together.
Put trusted evidence at the point of decision and measure whether outcomes and capabilities move.
Remove unnecessary work and automate or delegate machine-executable work where it creates value.
Organisation & Learning
Move decisions towards the people closest to the problem, with context, guardrails and accountability.
Make assumptions explicit, test them quickly and let evidence change what the organisation does.
The AXAT assessment
An AI-enabled diagnostic that turns the gap into a plan.
AXAT is an AI-enabled, evidence-based diagnostic across all seven AX capabilities and 21 dimensions. Each participant completes it before the full-day session, in about 40 minutes.
Because the diagnostic work is done beforehand, Part 2 of the session can focus on decisions: which outcomes matter, which capabilities to build first and who owns them. That is how a meaningful roadmap, aligned to outcomes, can be built in a single half-day session.
01Where you are
A measurable baseline across 21 dimensions, from your whole leadership team, not one opinion.
02The gap to close
Between the organisation you have and the one the future you imagined requires.
03What to do about it
Specific, contextualised actions and advice for your business, ready to prioritise in the room.
What you leave with
Half day for clarity. Full day to decide what to do.
You will not leave with an AI wish list or blue-sky objectives. You leave with a shared view of what AI could genuinely change for your business and, in the full day, a prioritised roadmap your leadership team can act on.
AI Clarity
Build your competitor, understand how it could change the basis of competition and identify where your current business is exposed or advantaged.
- Shared clarity on how AI could change your market and customer expectations
- A clear view of exposure – what a new entrant could do differently
- Your incumbent advantages – customers, trust, expertise, data and assets worth exploiting
- The capabilities that matter most
- A concise findings summary
£1,650+ VAT
£330 per attendee at five participants
Book the half dayAI Clarity & Action
Everything in AI Clarity, taken through to a prioritised roadmap your leadership team owns.
- A shared future view of where AI can genuinely benefit the organisation
- A deeper diagnostic (AXAT) of the capabilities that need to move
- The gap between where you are and what competing will require
- A prioritised, achievable roadmap with owners and first steps
- Agreed next actions so work can start immediately
£2,250+ VAT
£450 per attendee at five participants
Book the full day →Prices cover up to five leadership team members, delivered remotely. Additional attendees are £50 each per session, up to eight in total. On-site delivery is available, with travel and accommodation charged at cost. Each participant completes a short AX assessment beforehand: about 15 minutes for the half day, or 40 for the full-day AXAT diagnostic. Every session includes a check-in 14 days later.
Want the detail?
Download the overview (PDF) ↓Evidence
The method is new. The pattern isn’t.
Different technologies, same discipline: give leadership teams space to challenge assumptions, then turn the thinking into changes that show up in the results.
13% → 2%
Customer churn
Redesigned the customer-success operating model. Close rates also moved from 30% to 70%.
£10m p.a.
Improvement opportunity
Capability and cultural assessment across a 4,000-person civil service.
£2m
Pipeline
Created a new annual recurring revenue pipeline in two months by repositioning the proposition around what the product did best.
50%
Valuation uplift
Rebuilt and repositioned an ageing product into a modern B2B SaaS proposition, contributing to a 50% valuation uplift in 12 months.
Growth
Practice turnaround
Reset strategy and proposition for a 35-person consulting practice after years of decline.
30 clients
AI-native platform
Built an AI-native software business from concept to clients in eight countries in its first year.
About Robert
I advise from inside the change.
- Now
- CEO & Co-founder, TheAX.ai
- Track record
- Two SaaS businesses founded · 35-person practice led
- Perspective
- Founder, operator, consultant and product leader
- Based
- Wiltshire · working UK-wide
AI is not primarily a technology implementation problem. It is a business, product, service and organisational design problem.
I have founded two SaaS businesses, led product and operations in venture-backed scale-ups, run a 35-person consulting practice and advised leadership teams across government, telecoms, SaaS, financial services and consulting. The thread throughout has been capability: what an organisation needs to be able to do to produce an outcome, and what has to change to get there.
Today I am also building TheAX.ai, so the questions I help leadership teams answer are the ones I face as a founder: what has genuinely changed, what should be redesigned, and whether AI is actually improving the business.
I deliberately take on a small number of advisory engagements. It keeps me close to using TheAX.ai with real leadership teams, real constraints and real decisions, the same way our customers do.
Facilitated, not presented.
My work is most useful before there is a plan, when a leadership team needs to step back, challenge the assumptions it is carrying and work out what it really thinks. I have facilitated teams across start-ups, large enterprises and government, and published research on organisational capability development.
My role is not to tell you what to think. It is to create the structure, challenge and space for the right conversation, so you reach decisions you can own and turn them into action.
Questions
Before we talk.
Why build a fictional competitor?
Because redesigning your own business directly tends to pull today’s products, roles, systems and constraints into the discussion. The competitor gives the team permission to think from first principles before bringing the realities – and advantages – of the incumbent back in.
Is it remote or in person?
Remote as standard, using a shared online whiteboard. It can run on site, with travel and accommodation charged at cost. The full day can be one day, or two half days no more than a week apart.
Do you need to be advanced in AI already?
No. The point is to work out what AI should mean for the business before making large technology commitments. Existing data, technology or governance constraints can then be addressed because there is a clear reason to address them.
Do you build the AI solutions too?
I can make sure it gets built. My focus is helping you decide what to change, why it matters and how success will be measured. For delivery, I have access to experienced people who build AI solutions, and I can put together the right team for what you need.
Start with a conversation
What business would you build if you started today? Let’s find out.
Start with a short conversation about what is changing in your market and whether an AI Clarity Session would help your team.