{"id":29599,"date":"2026-08-25T10:46:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T08:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/intervju-nikar-zaradi-ui-prehitro-ne-odpuscajte\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T11:24:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T09:24:19","slug":"intervju-nikar-zaradi-ui-prehitro-ne-odpuscajte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/intervju-nikar-zaradi-ui-prehitro-ne-odpuscajte\/","title":{"rendered":"(Interview) Don\u2019t Be Too Quick to Lay People Off Because of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Cheap AI today does not necessarily mean cheap AI tomorrow \u2013 companies could end up without the critical knowledge held by their people and with expensive AI agents,”<\/em> warns the American professor.<\/p>\n

Why is AI unlikely to become the main source of competitive advantage for your business? Why does greater cost efficiency not necessarily translate into higher profits? Why do executives too quickly equate automation with layoffs, and how risky is it to end up with expensive AI agents but without the people who truly understand the business?<\/p>\n

Ahead of the Portoro\u017e Business Conference, we discussed these and other questions with one of the conference\u2019s keynote speakers, Christopher Tucci<\/strong>, an American Professor of Major Programme Management and Innovation at Sa\u00efd Business School, University of Oxford, and Professor of Digital Strategy and Innovation at Imperial College Business School in London<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Today, the same AI models are available to almost everyone. If AI is becoming a commodity, what is emerging as the new source of competitive advantage?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is true that AI models are becoming widely accessible, but I am not sure this is pure commoditisation, because the cost of using AI, or token costs, has been heavily subsidised recently. The fact is that only a handful of companies actually provide these models. So if you are using a large number of AI agents, you may eventually find that this is more expensive than you think.<\/p>\n

When it comes to competitive advantage, we need to go back to the fundamentals of business. What is your competitive advantage? How are you different from your competitors, and what is not so easy to imitate? Yes, AI can lower your costs in some areas. There is undoubtedly also a kind of technological arms race involved. But the fundamental question remains: what value are you actually creating?<\/p>\n

You also need to consider the strategic dimension in your overall plan: how easy is it to imitate what you do? Do you have complementary assets? Do you control a distribution network? Or are you doing something else in your field that sets you apart? The fundamentals of value creation and value capture do not change. That is why I believe every company needs to determine for itself which approach works best, based on what it already does.<\/p>\n

Companies often ask which AI tools they should adopt. Should they instead be asking whether their organisation is actually ready for AI? And what does AI readiness look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

They absolutely should. There is no doubt that it is useful to play around and experiment. Running pilot projects is a great thing. The problem comes when you turn a pilot into production, because suddenly you are confronted with all the organisational issues you had not been paying attention to before. I believe this is a bigger challenge than developing the technology itself.<\/p>\n

Implementing technology is certainly not easy and depends on the knowledge and skills of your employees. You also need to think about how you are going to use the technology. How are you going to bring stakeholders within the organisation on board? What is your position on layoffs and eliminating jobs? When I think of an organisation that is ready, I imagine one that has a good answer to the question: what are all these people going to do with their time if we free some of it up? What should people actually be doing with that time?<\/p>\n

Another aspect is that, for example, when experimenting and innovating, you need to take a leaner approach. Getting out of the building, making sure you are in contact with people, and finding out what your existing or potential new customers want is a different matter.<\/p>\n

We tend to spend one hundred percent of our time \u201cfighting fires\u201d, which is usually not good for organisational readiness for future challenges. Ideally, for example, you might devote 60 percent of your total time to fighting fires in the current market, 20 to 30 percent to thinking five years ahead, and 10 percent or less to thinking ten years into the future. A company that is more oriented towards this kind of thinking will be better prepared to adopt new technologies, because it is already considering how they fit into the business.<\/p>\n

You can read the full interview here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Cheap AI today does not necessarily mean cheap AI tomorrow \u2013 companies could end up without the critical knowledge held by their people and with expensive AI agents,” warns the American professor. Why is AI unlikely to become the main source of competitive advantage for your business? Why does greater cost efficiency not necessarily translate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":29600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[282],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aktualno"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29599"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29603,"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29599\/revisions\/29603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pkp.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}