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

This study examines executives’ perceptions 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 potential impact as differing between and within industries and which organizational, technological, and sectoral variables they perceive as most significant. We find that executives evaluate GenAI’s potential disruptive impact through its relation to the perceived value proposition of their own business. When this proposition aligns with GenAI-addressable tasks, executives perceive a greater threat of displacement; when orthogonal, they view GenAI as complementary. Sector-level factors such as regulation are perceived to buffer against disruption, while modularity and pattern recognition influence perceptions of both displacement threat and differentiation potential.

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