Strategy can feel overwhelmingly complex. Frameworks proliferate, consultants offer conflicting advice, and the business landscape shifts beneath our feet. Yet beneath this complexity lie three fundamental truths that govern how companies grow, compete, and ultimately succeed or fail.

Everyone in business has a universal goal: win customers and keep them. But in the AI era, the strategy itself is not endless new features, it is: deliver experiences that feel adaptive, proactive, and deeply embedded in the customer’s workflow. We will all pursue it the same way, by adopting AI to power those experiences.

We're entering the age of agentic AI, autonomous software agents capable of performing complex work that previously required dozens or even hundreds of human operators. And when one AI agent can replace fifty human seats, the entire economic foundation of modern SaaS begins to crumble.

Every seismic shift in business history begins with denial. Railroads dismissed automobiles. Publishers shrugged at the internet. Film studios laughed at streaming. Each time, incumbents convinced themselves that “business as usual” would hold. Each time, they were wrong. And each time, value shifted to those who saw the change for what it was.

AI can strengthen trust, or it can undermine it. The deciding factor is segmentation. Understand which customers chase the cutting edge, which value predictable outcomes, and which want proof before they act. Trust is built differently in each segment.

What’s the Difference Between Asking a Human to Complete a Task and Asking AI? On the surface, not much. You say “build me an app,” and both human and AI will deliver code. You say “write me some market copy,” and both will produce words on a page.