Every company needs three different AI visions

I was traveling to host a workshop by train when I bumped into two of my former partners in the dining car. They told me about their work at Moovy and the sheer velocity AI has brought to their development. Their team ships ideas that would take months in a large organization. They iterate daily, automate everything that slows them down, and treat AI as a native capability instead of a side project.

AI-first companies operate like speedboats while established corporations feel more like container ships.

The question is obvious: what should large companies do about it?

They need to learn to drive at three different speeds at the same time.

This is why, in our book AI Pathway, we introduce the idea of building three complementary AI visions. Not one unified picture, but a portfolio of perspectives that reflect the different time horizons of your business. Each vision highlights a distinct way AI can shape your future.

In the book, we encourage leadership teams to explore all three, then either select the one that best fits their direction or combine the strongest elements into a single shared vision. But they don’t need to collapse into one. These visions can also run in parallel, giving the organization space to advance existing business, experiment with new ideas, and explore disruptive possibilities at the same time.

1. The Save vision

The Save vision focuses on productivity, automation, and operational efficiency. This is the easiest place to start because the tools already exist. Think about the AI already embedded in Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and enterprise SaaS platforms. Summarizing meetings, rewriting emails, drafting documentation, analyzing feedback, creating first versions of presentations, preparing briefs, translating content, producing reports, or even supporting internal communication work.

Save is about giving every employee a smarter toolkit so they can work faster and with fewer errors. The goal isn’t cost cutting. The goal is time shifting, freeing people from repetitive tasks so they can focus on the work that actually moves the business forward.

Most companies underestimate how transformative the Save vision can be. When 45 percent of a workflow becomes augmented by AI, the whole operating rhythm of a team begins to change.

2. The Create vision

The Create vision asks a different question: how could AI help us build new value?

This is where companies begin designing new services, expanding offerings, experimenting with personalization, or rethinking customer journeys through AI-powered interactions. In many cases, Create leads to agent-based processes: new workflows, micro-services, or automated customer-facing tools that didn’t exist before.

It’s not about replacing people. It’s about amplifying their ability to imagine, test, and launch ideas. Create requires cross-functional collaboration because it touches product, sales, marketing, and support at the same time. These ideas don’t emerge from a single department. They emerge when teams learn to work with AI as a creative partner, not just as a productivity booster.

If Save is about working better, Create is about offering something new.

3. The Break vision

Break is the most uncomfortable, and the most important. It’s where you question the assumptions that have shaped your business for years. It’s where you explore models that feel unrealistic, even unreasonable, with your current skills and structures.

Break requires a startup mindset inside a mature organization. Focused teams, permission to try radically different approaches, and enough distance from legacy systems to think freely. This is where companies explore intelligent products that learn on their own, AI-enabled business models, or workflows that chip away at the traditional human-centered stages of knowledge work.

A good Break vision should feel slightly impossible. If it feels manageable, it’s not Break—it’s Create.

Why all three matter

Established companies often choose one track and run with it—usually Save, occasionally Create, almost never Break. But that creates a blind spot. You end up optimizing today at the expense of tomorrow.

The power of the three visions is in the balance. 

Save strengthens your core. 

Create expands your offering. 

Break protects your future.

Together they give leaders a structured way to navigate the speed gap between agile AI-first companies and large organizations built for stability, not velocity.

Here’s the real benefit: the three visions help you break your own internal barriers.

They spark new conversations, challenge entrenched assumptions, and prevent your organization from staying locked in the familiar.

In a world moving this fast, companies don’t need one AI vision. They need three. And the courage to pursue them at the same time.