The AI productivity wave has everyone talking about shipping 10x faster. Code generation, automated testing, instant prototypes - the tools are incredible. But here's the uncomfortable truth: it doesn't matter.
We're solving the wrong constraint.
The Real Bottleneck Isn't What You Think
The bottleneck in product development was never our ability to build things. It was never about shipping more features faster. The real constraint - the one that actually determines success - is our customers' attention.
Your users don't have 10x more time to evaluate your experiments. They don't have 10x more patience for half-baked features. They certainly don't have 10x more cognitive bandwidth to parse through the noise of everything you're now capable of throwing at them.
But here's the math that makes this even more brutal: most companies simply don't have enough customers to "spray and pray" with AI-generated prototypes or features. Meta and Google might be able to A/B test countless variations across billions of users, but if you're a B2B SaaS with 500 customers, or a marketplace with 50,000 active users, every experiment costs you dearly. Every confused customer is a potential lost renewal, a negative reference, or a churned account that takes months to replace.
When we can suddenly ship 10x more, the temptation is obvious: test everything, iterate rapidly, let the market decide. It feels scientific. It feels modern. But it's a trap.
More experiments without more strategic thinking just means more ways to confuse your customers and dilute your value proposition. More A/B tests without deeper customer understanding just mean more data points that miss the actual insights that matter. When you have a finite customer base, every experiment that doesn't land is an opportunity cost. Every confused user is a relationship damaged. Every poorly-conceived feature is trust eroded. You can't iterate your way out of strategic confusion when your customer base isn't large enough to absorb the failures.
As Steve Jobs put it, "Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features." AI makes it easier to test more ideas and build more features, but it doesn't make it easier to know which to say no to.
The Value of Strategic Experimentation
Don't misunderstand: rapid experimentation and the lean startup methodology of build-measure-learn remain critical. If you're not practising rapid experimentation as part of your product discovery today, AI should absolutely be part of your toolkit to start.
AI can dramatically improve your experimentation capabilities in strategic ways. It can help you prototype ideas faster to test with customers, analyse feedback more thoroughly, and iterate on concepts more quickly. The key insight from lean methodology - that learning is more valuable than being right - remains true, and AI can accelerate that.
But here's where strategy matters: Lean methodology was never about experimenting with everything possible. It was about systematically testing your riskiest assumptions first. Lean Startup famously emphasised building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - but the emphasis is on "viable" for solving a specific customer problem, not "minimum" in the sense of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.
AI can accelerate your ability to test assumptions, but it doesn't help you identify which assumptions are worth testing. That requires strategic thinking about your customers, your market position, and your value proposition. Speed amplifies good strategy and bad strategy equally.
Why Strategy Matters More Than Ever
When anyone can build anything quickly, yesterday's differentiator becomes today's commodity. The proliferation of AI tools means that building features is no longer a competitive advantage - choosing the right features to build is.
As Michael Porter reminds us, strategy is about "deliberately choosing to be different." AI amplifies this truth: when you can build anything, the quality of your choices becomes your only real differentiator.
The companies that will win aren't those shipping the most. They're the ones maintaining strategic focus while others chase every possibility. They're using AI's speed to perfect their strategic choices, not proliferate their experiments.
Strategic Discipline in an AI World
So what does strategic discipline look like when AI can make anything possible?
Use AI to amplify your strategic thinking, not replace it. Your strategy toolkit becomes more important, not less. There are fascinating early examples of AI-driven hypothesis generation and validation, synthetic/simulated audiences, and more. AI can help you gather customer insights faster, analyse competitive landscapes more thoroughly, and test strategic hypotheses more quickly - but it can't make the fundamental strategic choices for you.
Be more intentional about customer attention. Now more than ever, we have to respect our customers' time and attention. No matter who you are, you don't have infinite customers, so you can't test infinite ideas on them.
Use speed to go deeper, not wider. AI's speed advantage should be used to iterate more thoughtfully on problems that actually matter to your users, not to proliferate experiments across every possible direction. Use it to perfect experiences rather than proliferate them.
Focus on better strategic decision-making. Map your assumptions, test only the riskiest, develop scenario planning, and improve your organisation's strategic muscle.
Maintain strategic clarity. As I've emphasised before, 95% of teams don't understand their company's strategy. AI acceleration makes this problem worse, not better. When your entire Decision Stack - from vision down to daily execution - isn't aligned, giving teams AI tools just amplifies the confusion at 10x speed. You need clarity at every level: vision, strategy, objectives, opportunities, and principles. If your team doesn't understand why you're building something, AI will only help them build the wrong thing faster.
The AI Bottom Line
Here's what most companies will get wrong: they'll treat AI as a production accelerator when it's actually a strategy amplifier. Whatever strategic discipline you have - or lack - AI will magnify it tenfold.
The constraint isn't our shipping speed anymore. It's our strategic discipline. In a world where everyone can build everything, the winners will be those who choose to build the right things.
Yes, use AI to go faster. But remember: in the attention economy, every experiment has a cost, every feature competes for focus, and every confused customer is a relationship damaged. So use that speed to amplify your strategic thinking. To go deeper on fewer, better-chosen problems. To perfect experiences rather than proliferate them.
The future belongs to companies that can maintain strategic focus in an age of infinite possibilities. That's a human capability that no AI can replace - and the companies that develop it will build the only kind of sustainable advantage that matters: the ability to consistently make better strategic choices than their competition.
10x speed without 10x strategic thinking is just 10x chaos. And chaos, no matter how fast, never beats strategy.
If you're struggling with putting strategy into action, check out my hands-on workshops or reach out if you want to work with me as an advisor or coach!