Companies are shifting from asking how to use AI to asking how they would design work from scratch with it. This piece covers three structural shifts: knowledge workers increasingly manage agents instead of doing the work themselves, operating models must stay in “perpetual beta” built on continuous learning, and competitive advantage is moving beyond access to AI itself.

Workhelix co-founders Erik Brynjolfsson and Andy McAfee appear alongside leaders from Microsoft, Kyndryl, Emergence Capital, and GitHub. Erik explains why AI-native firms are pulling away and why tacit knowledge is becoming a key asset. Andy urges leaders to plan a little and iterate a lot.