How AI Is Re-Shaping Strategy: From Tools to Transformation

Executive Talk with Phil Phelan, Chief Strategy Officer, Publicis Sapient.

Much of the public conversation around AI and strategy has focused on surface-level productivity gains, faster slide decks, quicker research, automated tasks. But the latest wave of AI is exerting pressure far beyond individual workflows.

In this Executive Talk, Phil Phelan, Chief Strategy Officer at Publicis Sapient, examines how AI is beginning to reshape strategy at the enterprise level, not by speeding up old processes, but by altering the fundamentals of how organisations sense, decide, design, and act.

Building on the idea that “we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us,” Phil explores three major shifts — and the tensions within them — that are redefining strategic practice:

• Collapsing strategic timelines as AI compresses analysis, synthesis, and decision cycles

• New risk dynamics emerging from faster iteration, probabilistic tooling, and increasingly autonomous systems

• Shifts in the balance between analysis, judgement and creativity, as AI becomes a partner in exploration, not just efficiency
  

Phil also unpacks where organisations can begin integrating AI into their strategic process today, and what conditions enable strategy teams to move from experimentation to structural change.

For leaders responsible for shaping long-range direction, investment, and transformation, this session offers a clear, grounded view of how AI is reshaping the discipline of strategy itself.?

A must-watch for executives navigating the next era of strategic design and decision-making.