GoKawiilOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Most business leaders using AI today are getting results that feel productive — but not transformative. That’s the dangerous part.
The gap between “this seems useful” and “this is creating a real competitive advantage” is almost invisible while you’re inside it. Most entrepreneurs don’t realize they’re behind until a competitor suddenly starts moving faster, operating leaner or producing better work at scale. By then, the gap is much harder to close.
Over the past year, I’ve spoken with founders and CEOs across industries about how they’re using AI inside their businesses. Nearly all of them were using ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini in some capacity. Nearly all believed they were ahead of the curve. Most weren’t.
At an Entrepreneurs’ Organization retreat in Bourgogne, France, I presented a framework called “The 10 Stages of AI Implementation for Business Leaders” to a group of entrepreneurs running companies with more than €1 million in annual revenue. Every person in the room was already using AI. But during the conversations that followed, one pattern became obvious: almost everyone had overestimated their level of AI maturity. That realization led me back to an unlikely source — a 2002 press briefing from former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The AI framework entrepreneurs unexpectedly need
Rumsfeld famously divided knowledge into four categories:
Known knowns
Known unknowns
Unknown knowns
... continue reading