Prof. Karim Lakhani: Revisiting the Corporate Challenge of Adopting AI

26 Dec 2025 · 32 min
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Podcast interview (aired/recorded Dec 26, 2025) between host Ann Berry and Harvard Business School Professor Karim Lakhani about corporate adoption of AI. Key themes: treating AI deployments like clinical trials (randomized experiments) to measure causal impact; case studies with Procter & Gamble and Boston Consulting Group showing mixed effects (productivity gains for creative tasks, failures on spreadsheet tasks); Ant Group as an example of an AI-native financial firm (’3-1-0’ mantra, extreme scale with relatively few employees); concerns about organizational change management (Lakhani’s 30/70 tech vs. change split), incentives for content creators versus model builders, academia–industry talent flows, and market-scale capex questions. Practical findings cited: ~800 consultants in the BCG trial; creative-task performance +~40% (median → 95th percentile), spreadsheet-task performance −~20%; P&G/other examples show large time savings (example: marketing message creation from ~100 hours to ~1.5 hours with ~15% click-through rates). Lakhani estimates a one-person-unicorn (>$1B with one employee) is “not yet” and likely a decade away.

Questions this episode answers

December 26, 2025.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Procter & Gamble (P&G).

About 800 consultants.

Approximately +40% improvement (median-with-AI moved to ~95th percentile).

Performance dropped by about 20% (tools hallucinated on spreadsheets at the time).

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