History and Power of Contests

What if the expertise that makes your company valuable today could be replicated—or even surpassed—by AI within a year?

If you're running or leading a business, you're already feeling the pressure: AI disruption is moving faster than your operating model can adapt. This episode helps you understand why the ground is shifting so quickly, what it means for the expertise inside your organization, and how you can stay ahead instead of getting blindsided by competitors who adopt AI more strategically and more rapidly.

You'll walk away with clarity on:

• How AI is lowering the cost of expertise—and what that means for your competitive advantage.

• A practical way to rethink your business and operating model so you can adopt AI at an exponential pace, not a linear one.

• How to help your team embrace AI without fear by understanding new working modes like centaurs, cyborgs, and self-automators.

Hit play now to learn the specific mindset and moves CEOs are using to turn AI disruption into a strategic edge.

Check out:

06:45 — How Karim shifted from open-source innovation to AI

This is where Karim explains the surprising path from crowdsourcing and NASA experiments to machine-learning breakthroughs—and why those early signals showed him AI would reshape business, not just technology.

22:10 — The big insight: AI is lowering the cost of expertise

A must-hear moment. Karim explains why AI isn't just another tool—it fundamentally changes what expertise means within a company — and why CEOs need to view their business as a "bundle of expertise" being rewired.

36:55 — The three ways humans actually work with AI

This section introduces centaurs, cyborgs, and self-automators—and what these modes reveal about adoption, resistance, identity, and where value will come from as AI accelerates.

About Dr. Karim Lakhani

Karim R. Lakhani is the Dorothy & Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He specializes in technology management, innovation, digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI). His innovation-related research is centered around his role as the founder and co-director of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard and as the principal investigator of the NASA Tournament Laboratory. Karim is known for his original scholarship on open source communities and innovation contests and has pioneered the use of field experiments to help solve innovation-related challenges while simultaneously generating rigorous research in partnership with organizations like NASA, Harvard Medical School, The Broad Institute, TopCoder, The Linux Foundation and various private organizations. His digital transformation research investigates the role of analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in reshaping business and operating models. This research is complemented through his leadership as co-founder and chair of the The Digital, Data, and Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard and as co-founder and co-chair of the Harvard Business Analytics Program, a university-wide online program transforming mid-career executives into data-savvy leaders.