Thought is the most important of any of the instruments managers employ to run the companies. There are two different methods for interpreting data: intuition and cognitive, which are dubbed as quickly and slowly by Nobel winner Daniel Kahneman. Computers are outperforming more and more people in both categories nowadays. Can managers bring value to businesses? Fortunately, humans still have an advantage over machines with one mental capacity: the refraining process.
It’s not easy to reframe. The manner in which managers decide can be profoundly rooted in business norms, organization past, and the training and knowledge of managers themselves. Reframing might take a lot of time. Reframing is essential because breakthroughs in a new business model frequently arise when firms move apart beyond traditional assumptions on creating and acquiring value.
How markets work is complex. It takes a lot of resources and insight to understand markets well enough to understand the shifts they’re likely to see in the near term and long term. Market dynamics is one of the main tools economists use to escape such thinking. Reframing is a process by which you can think about markets in new ways. To do so, you’ll need data, best guesses about future developments, and an understanding of how markets work that’s different from what’s generally believed.
What breakthroughs does AI need to be useful? In principle, it’s already useful enough to be worth investing in. A solid understanding of how people think about problems unlocks a lot of potentials—but only if you can also teach machines how to think like people. This is why AI researchers get so excited about machine learning—it gives machines the ability to automatically learn from feedback; it lets them see patterns even when they’re not obvious; it lowers the barrier to entry for potential users by removing human decision biases from the picture.
While one day AI might be able to replace many human jobs, that day is nowhere in sight, and it will take many years of development to reach that level.
