At a recent HBR’s Strategy Summit, leading thinkers tackled Roger Martin’s foundational question : What is the true purpose of an enterprise beyond short-term profits ? The sessions converged on a clear answer – In an intangible, AI-driven economy, purpose is now about maximizing profits and serving self interests + mission-driven value creation – with AI augmenting human capabilities to make innovation more rewarding and deliver meaningful new benefits to the organization and society. As a result, traditional mass-production and service models are transitioning to adaptive, human-centered and digitally savvy organizations that increasingly prioritize long-term viability and value creation (over short term gains) that include –
1. Centering strategy on a core mission : Columbia Business School Professor Rita McGrath showed how companies like Novartis and Pfizer succeed by focusing small, permission-less teams on a single bold mission (ie: “inventive medicines”) to create opportunities and realize human potential.
2. Build the “ Octopus Organization ” : Amazon executives Jana Werner and Phil Le-Brun described how AI requires a shift from hierarchy to continuous adaptation. Purpose now means giving people clarity, ownership, and curiosity so they can flourish – within the core and at the edges of the organization.
3. Use AI for radical reinvention : HBS Professor Tsedal Neeley explained how AI enables unprecedented scale, speed, and scope. Moderna’s “ tech doing biology ” is the model with data-driven flywheels that super-serve stakeholders while avoiding cultural stagnation.
4. Make AI the firm’s operating system : Cisco’s Liz Centoni demonstrated how AI should augment – not replace – human judgment, creating hyper-personalized experiences that build trust and loyalty as well as meaningfully improving outcomes.
5. Embrace abundance through learning-by-doing : MIT Sloan Principal Research Scientist Andy McAfee urged leaders to treat AI as a general-purpose technology. And recognize, this is an opportunity to flatten hierarchies and free people for exploration and innovation.
6. Rethink business models around AI : Publicis Sapient CEO Nigel Vaz indicated that winning companies turn AI into their operating system, focusing on big problems, interdisciplinary connections, and rigorous unit economics.
7. Create Blue Oceans with AI : INSEAD Professor Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne showed how AI complements human imagination to create new markets and opportunities as well as encouraging people to build “ Personal Blue Oceans ” with AI disruption.
8. Develop new business models : HBRProfessor Felix Oberholzer-Gee’s session illustrated how even markets dominated by established incumbents can be cracked through innovation, delivering new and better value, serendipity, humility, and deep understanding of human motivation – which in turn entails a very different kind of organization. This is important since most traditionally managed enterprises generally have long-term returns of 10 % or less – while organizations good at business innovation and evolving their business model are achieving returns of up to 40 % !
The New Purpose : AI-Augmented Abundance
A unifying theme emerged at the conference – AI should augment human creativity and judgment, not replace it. The most successful leaders are designing systems that create abundance with greater productivity as well as more and better innovation that enable people to be better at developing high value competencies to achieve their potential and meaningfully improve outcomes for their organization.
While the old rules of strategy still apply, AI is an opportunity to create more value by generating unique insights, serving customers in new ways, and making trade-offs others won’t – with a powerful new tool that enables us to do it better and quicker.
Further, recognize “ Purpose ” in the AI era is no longer about extracting value – but about creating value – for customers, employees, society, plus the long-term viability and vitality of the organization.
March 20, 2026 by Steve Denning / CAIL CAIL Innovation commentary
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