For some of us, predictions about the impact of artificial intelligence are remarkably consistent with sentiments around the importance of innovation in the technology business we have heard since the 1980s and up through the internet revolution.
“In 2030, I think we will be bringing offerings and solutions to market that we can’t even envision
today because the technology isn’t there yet,” says Maureen Power Sweeny, RapidScale chief revenue officer.” I would say 50 percent of our revenues will come from new offerings.”
Some of us have been hearing that since the 1980s, and the sentiment seems borne out by events, and especially for digital products that can be created and adopted faster than older physical-only products.
Five to 10 years is now multiple generations of product evolution in software, cloud, data, and AI.
Company | Product generating major revenue today | Year introduced (approx.) | What it displaced or superseded |
Amazon (AWS) | Lambda, SageMaker, Bedrock | 2014–2023 | EC2-only compute, on-prem ML |
Microsoft | Azure OpenAI, M365 E5, Copilot | 2019–2024 | Perpetual Office licenses, on-prem Exchange |
Salesforce | Einstein AI, Platform, Industry Clouds | 2016–2023 | Standalone CRM licenses |
NVIDIA | Data center AI accelerators | 2017–present | Gaming GPUs as primary revenue driver |
Adobe | Creative Cloud subscriptions | 2013–2017 ramp | Perpetual boxed software |
ServiceNow | Creator workflows, AI ops | 2018–2024 | ITSM-only positioning |
Zoom | Phone, Contact Center, AI Companion | 2019–2024 | Single-product video meetings |
Apple | Services (TV+, Pay, Arcade, Fitness) | 2019–present | Hardware-only growth |
Google | Cloud AI APIs, Workspace AI | 2018–2024 | Ad-only monetization model |
Netflix | Ad-supported tier, originals | 2016–2023 | Licensed content distribution |
But many industries feature high rates of innovation and product replacement. In many fast-moving consumer categories, 40 percent to 70 percent of active SKUs (stock keeping units) at major retailers are replaced within five years, even though the brand name on the shelf barely changes.
Category | Brand | Current high-volume SKUs (examples) | Introduced (approx.) | What they replaced or supplemented |
Beverages | Coca-Cola | Zero Sugar reformulations, mini-cans | 2017–2023 | Full-sugar flagship SKUs |
Snacks | PepsiCo (Lay’s) | Baked, Kettle, limited flavors | 2016–2024 | Core salted potato chips |
Dairy alternatives | Danone | Oat-based yogurts, creamers | 2018–2024 | Traditional dairy SKUs |
Household | P&G (Tide) | Pods, hygienic clean, cold-water | 2015–2023 | Liquid detergent bottles |
Beauty | L’Oréal | Clean beauty, dermocosmetic lines | 2017–2024 | Mass cosmetic formulations |
Food | Nestlé | Plant-based frozen meals | 2019–2024 | Animal-protein frozen SKUs |
Alcohol | AB InBev | Hard seltzers, flavored malt drinks | 2018–2023 | Core beer SKUs |
Personal care | Unilever | Sulfate-free, refill formats | 2019–2024 | Traditional shampoo bottles |
Candy | Mars | Sugar-reduced, portion-controlled | 2016–2023 | Standard single-serve bars |
Pet food | General Mills | Fresh, functional pet foods | 2019–2024 | Dry kibble-only lines |
So one commonality with prior industry changes is rapid and continual product innovation.
The other perhaps-obvious potential change is industry disruption.
In 2030, enterprise success won’t be measured by steady progress toward long-term targets but by how much an enterprise disrupts its industry quarter by quarter, IBM researchers argue.
The biggest risk won’t be making the wrong bets, but making bets that are too small, the authors argue.
That again will sound familiar to those who witnessed the changes in firms and industries wrought by the internet. Netflix provides an example.
Netflix disrupted multiple stages of the video entertainment value chain, first by unbundling physical retail rentals and later by collapsing production, aggregation, and direct distribution into a single global streaming platform.
source: Digital Leadership
Value chain stage | Traditional role | Netflix’s move | Why it was disruptive |
Content creation & commissioning | Studios and networks funded, developed, and greenlit shows and films, often for domestic first windows. | Became a major commissioner and producer of originals, including local-language series with global ambitions.academic.oup+1 | Shifted power from broadcasters to a data-driven buyer with global reach, reducing reliance on legacy networks and altering bargaining dynamics.academic.oup |
Aggregation & programming | Broadcasters and cable networks assembled schedules and channel line‑ups; video stores curated shelves. | Offered a huge on-demand catalog with personalized rows and recommendations instead of fixed schedules or shelves.accio+1 | Undermined the value of linear programming and physical curation, making algorithmic discovery the primary gatekeeper of attention.accio+1 |
Distribution to consumers | Cable/satellite operators and retail chains controlled access via physical locations or set‑top boxes; households subscribed to bundles or rented per title.forbes+1 | Delivered content over the open internet to apps on TVs, phones, and PCs via a flat-rate subscription.accio+1 | Bypassed cable operators and retail stores, drove cord‑cutting, and shifted consumer spend from channel bundles and rentals to streaming subscriptions.intrinsicinvesting |
Retail / rental monetization | Video rental stores monetized individual rentals and late fees, constrained by local inventory and store hours.linkedin+1 | Introduced queue-based subscription rentals by mail, then streaming with no late fees and no trip to the store.linkedin+1 | Eliminated the core revenue levers of incumbents (late fees, impulse rentals), making their store-heavy model uncompetitive.linkedin+1 |
Marketing & discovery | Studios and networks relied on mass advertising, trailers, and prominent placement in stores or schedules. | Used in‑product recommendations, personalized homepages, and data-informed promotion of titles.accio+1 | Reduced dependence on external marketing funnels, internalized discovery, and extended tail consumption of niche titles.accio |
International sales & licensing | Rights sold territory-by-territory with complex windowing across cinema, pay TV, free TV, and home video. | Negotiated multi-territory and global rights and launched near-simultaneous international releases on one platform.academic.oup+1 | Collapsed layers of local intermediaries and windows, standardizing global access and weakening traditional territorial carve‑ups.academic.oup |
The internet accelerated innovation by making information, markets, and coordination vastly cheaper and faster, turning experimentation by firms into a continuous, global, software-driven process.
Enablers included:
Radically lower information and transaction costs
Continuous software-based iteration, shortening innovation cycles from years to weeks or days.
Global market access
Real-time feedback loops
Platform and ecosystem effects (e-commerce, app stores, social networks).
The take-away is that, as we have seen before, AI is going to enable more industry and firm disruption.
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