Why leaders should treat AI like electricity

3-minute read

As enterprises expand AI across their operations, leaders face growing pressure to demonstrate returns on their investments. Yet evaluating AI through the same lens as a traditional software implementation can obscure its broader potential. In a recent Fast Company article, Logic20/20 Chief Operating Officer Travis Jones explains why leaders should instead consider AI as foundational infrastructure—and why the history of electrification offers a useful model for the transition ahead.

Read the full article in Fast Company: "Treat AI like electricity"

Rethinking the AI investment model

Early factories gained relatively little from electricity when they simply replaced steam engines with electric motors. Greater gains emerged as manufacturers redesigned factories and operations around the capabilities electricity provided.

Travis argues that AI presents a similar opportunity. Rather than approaching individual AI tools and use cases as isolated investments, organizations can consider the broader capabilities needed to embed AI across business operations. The shift raises important questions about investment horizons, measures of value, and the organizational changes required to capture AI’s potential.

Building AI as an enterprise capability

Moving from AI experimentation to broader adoption requires more than deploying additional tools. As Travis explains in Fast Company, organizations need an enterprise foundation that can support AI across multiple functions while adapting as capabilities and business needs evolve.

That foundation changes the conversation from individual implementations to enterprise capability. It also requires leaders to consider the organizational structures, governance, and workforce practices that can support AI as its role expands.

Preparing for the next phase of enterprise AI

As AI becomes more deeply integrated into everyday business operations, familiar approaches to technology investment may become less useful. Leaders have an opportunity to consider a longer-term question: What would change if their organizations treated AI not as another application, but as infrastructure?

The electricity analogy provides a framework for exploring that question. Travis examines the leadership priorities that can help organizations prepare for an environment where AI becomes an increasingly foundational part of business operations.