Here at Trainr, we are seeing an increasing pattern of behaviour with companies we’ve talked to in the last few months – it’s been written about elsewhere, but seeing it at the coalface is startling, and worrying (at least the companies involved should be very worried).
The behaviour is called entrenched resistance.
Although it is likely to have a greater impact on legacy companies, even relatively younger 5-20-year-old modern companies are beginning to suffer, and will suffer greatly in the next five years.
Simply put, it’s a ‘do nothing’ attitude: no AI policy, no AI experimentation, no AI leadership, and (possibly the biggest threat of all) no understanding that consumer and customer behaviour is about to undergo a massive shift. Causes can be rooted in a lack of understanding, fear of change, or investment in legacy systems that are perceived as too costly to overhaul.
Companies who don’t acknowledge and prepare for this shift face a massive risk: imagine being a multi-billion revenue company and not foreseeing and preparing for even a 1% change in the way customers are influenced, make purchase decisions and search. Now imagine that’s a 10% change. Incumbents will also come under threat from clever, scrappy start-ups who can match them or offer an improved service using a suite of inexpensive AI-powered tools.
‘We’re too busy…’
‘We tried ChatGPT but it didn’t work…’
‘We’ll get to it once this next big project is finished’.
At the rate things are going, every month that passes without a significant effort to understand these implications is likely to increase the threat of a grave existential crisis.
Contact us today to avoid your own entrenched resistance.