Discovery is the work AI gives back

The useful part

New McKinsey research on where the durable returns actually live, and what that means for teams deciding what to build. Generated with AI by Author At the end of 2025, almost nine in ten organizations surveyed by McKinsey in The state of AI in 2025: That gap, examined in "Where AI will create value and where it won't" in the April 2026 issue of McKinsey Quarterly, is not an adoption problem.

How it works

• Most companies are using AI to do their existing work faster, when the durable returns require a different kind of work entirely.
• When I asked what the work had taught them that they did not already believe, the answer was: not much.
• Across the teams and founders I work with, the questions are getting smaller.
• From "what is worth building?" to "how can we test this faster?" From "Is this the right problem?" to "Can w...

Details worth keeping

Productivity is the floor of AI's value, not the ceiling. They were proud, and the throughput was real.