How good is AI at strategy? Mary and Tom decided to find out by comparing two approaches to the same strategic challenge: one using Scout, the AI strategic marketing system they’ve been developing, and another simply asking a general-purpose AI to develop the strategy.

The first surprise was humbling: unaided AI was remarkably good. But digging deeper revealed a familiar problem. AI generated lots of good strategic ideas without making the difficult tradeoffs that turn possibilities into strategy. 

Key Takeaways

• AI is already surprisingly capable at generating strategic ideas and synthesizing enormous amounts of information.
• Prioritization requires the right criteria—and knowing which questions to ask, and in what sequence, remains critical.
• Effective Human + AI strategy requires stopping at key junctures so people can exercise judgment, align and refine the strategy before moving forward.

Quotes

• “AI is pretty good at strategy.”
• “Strategy is as much about what you’re NOT going to do as what you ARE going to do.”
• “Maybe expertise in the age of AI isn’t having all the answers. It’s knowing the questions you can’t afford to forget.”

AI can bring tremendous breadth, speed and synthesis to strategy. But the experiment suggests its greatest potential may come when those capabilities are combined with human expertise, judgment and alignment—not when AI is simply asked to produce the final answer.