How Disruptive Will Generative AI Be? A Micro-Level Analysis of Evidence and Expectations.

This study examines executives’ assessment of Generative AI’s impact on competitive advantage and their expectations of its disruptive potential.

Through abduction combining qualitative and quantitative work with UK Directors, we consider how executives view GenAI’s impact as differing between and within industries and which organizational, technological and sectoral variables they perceive as most significant.

We find that GenAI is seen as potentially causing sector-level displacement, especially in the presence of modularity and the absence of sector-level regulation.

Executives anticipate enhancing differentiation through GenAI drawing on firm-level complementary assets, suggesting a source of incumbent resilience.

We find that the more pattern recognition and proprietary data are important, the greater the perceived disruptive potential of GenAI, and the greater its perceived ability to drive displacement and differentiation alike.

Read the full paper here.