The Kodak Trap: Why Some Businesses Will Miss the AI Curve
Future Now is We Lead Out’s strategy blog for leaders rethinking how AI is reshaping professional services. We share research-driven, commercially grounded perspectives for founders and executives looking to stay ahead of the structural shifts that are already redefining how advisory work is sold, scaled, and delivered.
This week, we’re asking a hard question: why do some businesses act too late?
Will your organisation adapt in time?
Every executive agrees AI is important. Few act like it.
We’re seeing a pattern emerge: boards nodding at AI’s potential, but operating models staying stuck. And history shows what happens next. Kodak didn’t miss the digital camera because they lacked foresight; they invented it. They missed because their business model couldn’t let go of the past.
We call this the Kodak Trap: when companies overestimate how long they have to change, and underestimate what their competitors are willing to do.
Four reasons businesses delay, and why that’s dangerous
Economic inertia
When a legacy business is still profitable, the internal logic says: protect it. The problem is that today’s revenue streams become tomorrow’s handcuffs. Our research shows that firms with strong cash cows delay transformation longer and suffer more abrupt disruptions when new models finally arrive.
Cultural resistance
You can’t modernise with people who are protecting yesterday’s playbook. In our advisory work, we’ve seen that even high-performing teams can become blockers when change threatens identity, status, or clarity. Without a shared story, AI transformation feels optional, or worse, like a threat.
Underestimating exponential change
Most leadership teams plan for linear change. AI doesn’t move that way. It compounds. This creates a lag effect: by the time the shift is visible in financial results, it’s already too late to catch up. Early movers gain data, momentum, and mindshare. Everyone else scrambles.
No strategic story
Throwing money at tools won’t work. AI investments without a coherent “why” produce tech sprawl, not transformation. You end up with dozens of disconnected experiments, no executive alignment, and little to show beyond press releases. The signal here: leaders need to narrate the future, not just react to it.
What this means for leadership
If you’re leading a professional services firm, advisory unit, or enterprise capability that sells knowledge, AI is not a productivity tool. It’s a new way of thinking about how value is created, packaged, and delivered.
The risk isn’t just operational inefficiency. It’s strategic irrelevance.
Leaders must ask:
Are our revenue models future-proof?
Do we know where AI augments, automates, or replaces our current offers?
Can our team articulate a compelling “why now” for AI investment?
Where opportunity lies
To avoid the Kodak Trap, firms should:
Build executive fluency fast. Run working sessions that focus not on tools, but business model impact. Your exec team should be able to explain how AI changes your cost base, talent model, and delivery promise. Additionally, your executives need to start incorporating AI into their day-to-day work. Use breeds familiarity, which leads to understanding.
Prototype with purpose. Move from slideware to pilots. Not labs for the sake of innovation theatre, but tightly scoped, commercially relevant tests that build internal proof and belief.
A question for your next board meeting
If a new competitor started tomorrow, using only agentic AI, a low-cost delivery team, and a GTM motion based on personalised marketing, how quickly would they eat your lunch?
That’s not a future risk. It’s a current one.
We’d love to speak with leaders who are rethinking how they build, sell, and deliver professional services in an AI-shaped world.
We Lead Out helps business and government leaders navigate transformation with confidence, starting with the foundations that matter. Reach out to learn more about the trends affecting Australian businesses.
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