AI Is Not Just a Tool—It’s a New Standard for Ambition
By Phil Faust, Founder at Faust Forward
In moments of technological disruption, the question for leaders is simple: Will you use this to cut costs—or raise the bar?
The rise of AI, and particularly large language models (LLMs), presents one of the most profound opportunities for business and product innovation in a generation. But it’s also a strategic dividing line. While some companies will treat AI as just another efficiency lever, the real value will be captured by teams that use it to build better solutions, faster.
The Productivity Trap
I get it—with all the uncertainty today, it’s challenging for leaders not to look to cut costs, especially at well-established organizations. A new technology promises efficiency gains, and the reflex across many organizations is to ask: How much can we save? That’s understandable—but it’s also shortsighted. Because while some teams focus on trimming headcount or speeding up routine tasks, the most ambitious product and business leaders are asking a more important question:
What new value can we create now that this is possible?
AI isn’t just about speed or scale—it’s about unlocking new capabilities, expanding what your team can imagine, and enabling more dynamic, adaptive solutions for your customers.
Why This Matters for Product and Strategy Teams
At Faust Forward, we work with teams that are wrestling with big questions:
How do we differentiate in a crowded market?
How do we stay customer-led while moving faster?
How do we scale without losing strategic clarity?
AI doesn’t answer those questions for you—but it changes the way you answer them.
Here’s how ambitious teams are already using AI and LLMs to drive transformational outcomes:
New business models have your team exploring ways to utilize AI to help solve persistent problems and discover new opportunities.
Increased market and customer engagement with more time in market, learning about your customers and their changing needs.
Dynamic content generation and personalization that used to take weeks now happens in seconds—at scale.
Internal tooling and workflows that dramatically reduce time spent on coordination, freeing teams to focus on creativity and innovation.
Customer Expectations Are Rising—Fast
This isn’t just about what your team can do—it’s about what your customers will expect.
AI will raise the baseline for usability, responsiveness, and personalization across industries. Products that once felt “good enough” will feel stale. Once responsive services will seem slow. Companies that merely use AI to squeeze efficiency will lose ground to those that invest in using it to elevate the experience.
The companies that win will be those who:
Bet on ambition, not just optimization.
Reimagine customer value, not just internal efficiency.
Move faster. Learn as they go; you can't afford to wait until you have all of the information. Take risks, iterate, be agile.
Align strategy, product, and technology around what’s now possible, not what used to be complicated.
Where to Start
For leaders wondering how to take action now, we recommend asking:
Where could we go bolder if we weren’t held back by time, scale, or coordination?
What pain points do our customers tolerate today that we could eliminate tomorrow?
What would it look like to re-architect a core experience with AI at the center?
Are we working in ways built for an AI-powered future—or clinging to structures designed for a slower past?
Now is the time to revisit how your team makes decisions, collaborates, and delivers value.
This Is a Strategic Moment
LLMs aren’t just another wave of automation. They’re a new layer of leverage for every ambitious team—and a call to raise your sights. What got you here is not going to be enough to get you to where you want to go. At Faust Forward, we help product and business leaders make the most of this moment: challenging thinking, aligning vision, unlocking capability, and building better solutions for the people they serve.
This is the climate now. Let’s build something better, together.
