Every technology revolution offers a brief window of unreasonable advantage—an era when the bold can seize opportunities that later become ordinary. This is that moment for AI. The cost of cognition is collapsing. The rules haven’t caught up. The field is open to anyone ambitious enough to rewire their work, their organization, or their industry around machine intelligence. But none of these conditions will hold for long.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at NVIDIA’s headquarters in Santa Clara. It’s hard not to walk through those glass corridors without feeling that you’ve stepped inside the engine room of a new industrial age. Banks of machines hum like power plants. Engineers move with quiet precision, orchestrating what feels less like software development and more like manufacturing reality itself.

Meta and EssilorLuxottica just unveiled their newest Ray-Ban Display smart glasses: stylish frames with a built-in display and a neural band for intuitive control. Tech outlets are already celebrating the design, the convenience, the futuristic promise. But the real story isn’t what these glasses allow you to see. It’s what they allow AI to see.

There was this magical moment when the robot, having analyzed the skin of its target, gracefully swung into an autonomous ballet of algorithmically delineated motions, artfully mixing ingredients, shaking, and stirring with the deft precision of a London bartender. Moments later, the work was complete: a personalized bottle of bespoke skin foundation. 

I saw this little piece of theatre last week in Seoul at Hera Beauty in the Seoungsu district. Seoul is full of weird and wonderful, immersive retail experiences  - but here is something you might not know: South Korea is the most automated country on the planet today. One out of ten workers in that country is already a robot. 

AI-powered organizations will be different, just not in the ways you might expect. When evaluating the impact of new technology, business leaders often focus on the wrong criteria. The real issue is not whether there is a sound business case for cutting costs or increasing productivity through AI and automation, but rather, frankly assessing the disruptive potential of these very same tools and platforms to reshape the dynamics of your market. If not by you, then by who? If not now - then when?