In this episode, Mary, Tom, and Sean discuss how AI helps businesses find powerful strategic analogies—often from unexpected industries. But before AI can surface these insights, it must first be trained on your market landscape: stakeholders, segments, competitors, and differentiation. Without this foundation, AI risks delivering generic, unfocused recommendations rather than breakthrough strategies. The team shares real-world examples of companies using AI to validate differentiation, uncover hidden competitive threats, and accelerate strategic innovation—all while ensuring AI remains a tool for human-driven decision-making, not a replacement for it.

Key Discussion Points:

• The Power of Cross-Industry Analogies: Why businesses should look beyond their competitors for strategic inspiration.
• AI Needs Context to Deliver Value: The importance of defining stakeholders, segments, and competitors before using AI for strategy.
• Using AI to Validate Differentiation: How AI can assess whether a positioning statement or competitive move is truly unique.

Key Quotes:

• “AI is a powerful tool, but only if you first teach it your business—it can’t generate great strategy in a vacuum.” — Tom Spitale
• “The best strategic moves often come from industries you’d never expect—AI helps us find those hidden analogies faster.” — Mary Abbazia
• “AI doesn’t replace strategic expertise; it expands what’s possible by surfacing patterns we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.” — Sean Welham