Simone Cicero

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Boundaryless Conversations Podcast. On this podcast, we explore the future of business models, organisations, markets and society in our rapidly changing world. I’m joined today by my usual co-host, Shruthi Prakash. Hello Shruthi.

 

Shruthi Prakash 

Hello everybody.

 

Simone Cicero 

And we are honored to welcome our guest for today with a leading researcher, a strategist, an educator that works at the intersection of AI, digital transformation, and knowledge work. Louis-David Benyayer. Hello, Louis David. It’s great to have you here.

 

Louis-David Benyayer

Hello Simone, hello Shruthi, thanks for the invitation.

 

Simone Cicero 

Thanks for joining us. David is an associate professor at ESCP Business School, where he looks after AI initiatives, he researches about AI and how AI and big data reshape business models, decision making, and other especially key elements of the knowledge industry, particularly in education and consulting.

 

I mean, his work has been featured in top journals and platforms in, you know, like the London School of Economics Business Review, ESSEC and other publications, including the World Economic Forum. He is beyond academia, you know, he has been working in consulting and that’s where we met, you know, in the past more than a decade ago.

 

You know, our connection goes back nearly 15 years indeed, especially I recall because we share this passion about open business models and open source. But a few weeks ago we reconnected and we were exchanging updates and, David, you told me that your recent research has been focusing a lot on the impact of GenAI specifically on knowledge intensive fields. 

 

We talked about having you on the podcast to be our thought partner, essentially to explore how these impacts are going to play out. I mean, we are consultants, so we are very much interested in these. But of course, there is a lot of people in the world that is now looking at these impacts to make strategic decisions and, you know, choose their direction. 

 

Maybe as a first question, would like to offer you a way for you to give our listeners kind of a framework, let’s say, to assess what you believe it is and will be the impact of GenAI on knowledge work moving forward. So I leave it to you as our opening moment.

 

Louis-David Benyayer 

Well, thank you very much, Simone, and I really thank you because it’s great that we could reconnect on other topics than the one we had, as you said, a decade ago. But they are connected, as probably the conversation will show. 

 

Well, so that’s true that AI, but more particularly generative AI, are about to transform knowledge work as we know it. And maybe a way to look at it is to say that it may change both what we do and how we do it, which is kind of traditional in the digital transformation, something we heard about in other domains. Not only does it change what we do, for example, what we teach or the topic that we are involved in consulting, but it changes how we do it, how we teach and how we proceed for helping our clients. 

 

Another thing I could say is that, once again, similar to other digital transformation topics, there are always two types of dynamics, right? One which is how do these technologies enable people or organizations to do better what they’re currently doing? Better meaning more efficiently, cheaper, faster, but let’s say doing the same thing with a kind of a boost. 

 

The other movement is doing things totally different or totally differently, which is, for example, in consulting, let’s no longer have consultants that would be paid by the hour to make a study. Let’s have a subscription-based model of a model from a consulting company that you could look up to on, let’s say, a query-based pricing. We see that kind of things emerging. I don’t know if they will scale, but this is doing things totally differently. It’s no longer just making the consultant more efficient. It’s just changing totally. 

 

So I’m very bad at predictions. Even if I’m looking at AI, which is about predicting things, I’m very bad at predictions. But what I can see is those two types of dynamics that are unfolding currently.

 

Simone Cicero

Good, Great, I think, that you bring up this frame, again, to touch base on it, changes what we do and how we do it. And then at the end of the introduction, you also said it’s basically going to change the business model of consulting as well.

 

I think this is something we are seeing already in other industries, like even in software as a service, right? We have this push, thanks to GenAI, to move from selling the software into essentially selling the impacts, so selling the actual impacts in terms of reduction of workforce or substitution of workforce and so on.

 

My feeling is that the consulting business was already changing, right? So it was an industry that, it is an industry that has been impacted by many of the transformations that we have been seeing, we have seen in the industry so far. So maybe it’s a bit of a blunt question – Are we witnessing the end of consulting in your point of view or, what are you seeing in terms of the relevance of both consulting and education? Because these are very interrelated industries. It’s not a case that many educators also do consulting. 

 

So are we witnessing somehow the end of those industries? Or what is your feeling in terms of impacts?

 

Louis-David Benyayer

Well, I think, of course, a lot has been said in that view, right? I’d say, OK. But I think it’s true partly. And I would say that to make it short, it’s probably not the end of consulting, but probably the end of consulting as we know it. Because when we discuss the impact of generative AI, for both industries, it’s particularly striking when it comes to content. Because in both cases, generative AI tools help to access or synthesize content more precisely, faster, with sometimes a higher breadth of analysis.

 

It’s also a good way to explore new dimensions, so to have a kind of a partner that you could discuss with. So it’s really about, for me, right, it’s really content-driven, how to analyze content, discover new content, et cetera. But both education and consulting are not only about content. They are about content, because when we go to university, it’s probably to learn things, right? But it’s not only learning about content. 

 

This is why I’m not in the view of saying that generative AI signals the end of either education or consulting, because when you hire Simone Cicero and his team, it’s not only about the emails or the documents he sends. It’s also because there is something happening with the teams when you join a company that is way beyond the content. 

 

So my point here is to say that there is that trend of transformation of consulting. And I’m happy you say that it traces back to other things than just artificial intelligence or generative AI, right? We, of course, already saw the platforms emerging in consulting that changed somehow the access to knowledge work. So I’d say that first, it’s more the change of the industry than the end of the industry. But there is also something else, is that reality is usually more composite than a one-based way or one approach.

 

And it’s very likely that we will have several types of consulting existing at the same time, serving different needs, serving different types of clients for different premium tiers, let’s say. So let’s avoid to have a unique view on that very diverse industry.

 

And once again, sorry to focus on you, Simone, but you’re in the same business as Accenture, but I wouldn’t say you compare with Accenture for many different reasons, right? And both of you could say that you’re in the same industry. So reality will be composed by many different models.

 

Simone Cicero

So if I can make a recap and then I know that Shruthi has some very interesting question on methodologies and frameworks. So I think you said something very important that it’s worth mentioning that it’s not just about content. So consulting and education are normally about maybe content and complementary services, right?

 

It can be, for example, sometimes more operational elements or sometimes frameworks or software that you bring on or solutions that complement. So essentially, these impacts of GenAI are going to push more into modular consulting or more kind of sectorial or specialized consulting and push also towards more experimentation in terms of pricing, experimentation in terms of bundling. These are the things that I’m capturing from your conversation, which I think are very interesting bits to highlight for anybody doing or consuming consulting at this point in time. Shruthi.

 

Shruthi Prakash

Yeah, mean, so for me, I want to see how all of this can thereby operationalize essentially. if the premise of a traditional consulting service might change, what does that future look like? Because as we let’s say know it today, large part of what consultants do could be in relation to maybe frameworks or methodologies that are used, right? Like even we speak about 3EO in ours. There’s your traditional like five forces, blue ocean strategy and so on. 

 

So all of these are highly structured methodologies that AI could also assist in or execute by itself. So how does that operationalizing work? Have you already seen, let’s say organizations taking it up? How does that look like in the future or present? Yeah.

 

Louis-David Benyayer

Yeah, so it’s true that digital tools, whatever they are, are useful and used for a long time in the consulting process. And if you take the leading strategy firms, it’s been a long time that they’re using digital tools for their strategy consulting assignments. McKinsey in particular is famous for having developed a wide range of digital tools, pricing ones, for example, for helping their clients. And they’re using those tools within the framework of a bigger picture, a bigger scope assignment, and they’re using those software at one point in time. 

 

So I think this trend will probably continue of consultants having either proprietary or off-the-shelves software or tools that would help them through the process. Some of them could be about formalizing a framework or a sequence of analysis, as you’re suggesting with the Blue Ocean Strategy, for example, where you have those frameworks that can be easily supported by a digital tool. 

 

But once again, and we have all observed this, right? Blue Ocean Strategy Framework is available for everyone since 15 years now. And it’s super, super clear, right? When you read the book, when you look at the frameworks, it’s super clear. But you, of course, have experienced that if you’re in a workshop with someone that has never used or practised the methodology, it doesn’t work, right? Because it’s not about the steps and the way they are labeled. It’s about what you bring on the table to the conversation. And that heads back to something that we are seeing in both research and consulting is that what we start seeing in academic research about this is that the people that are leveraging them all those tools – AI and generative AI in particular, are usually the more experts. 

 

In the early signs, there were some findings saying that the people that would benefit the more from the technology would be the lower performers, like if they were getting a bit of a boost, right? Because they get some help, which makes sense, right? 

 

But now one year after, there are other research that say, well, it’s a little bit more complicated than this, right? And they have shown that in some specific contexts, it’s the opposite. It’s the good and the well-trained and the already experts that are getting the higher boost. 

 

Which means, in getting back to your point, that what we start seeing is that individuals, professionals, whatever their job is, researcher, teacher, consultant, would get better with GenAI if there are already good experts in their field. Which gets back to the question about how do you get that expertise in a world where there is generative AI and you can feel that you’re an expert just typing a query on a chatbot.

 

But these are two different questions, I agree. But getting back to your point, I think expertise would probably be even of a higher value than it was because the average expertise on a domain will be available for everyone very easily. Give me a brief on blah, blah. But then what do you do with that brief? How do you interpret it? How do you connect it with your reality? How do you prioritize the actions that would follow up that brief? In order to answer those questions, well, you’d better have a bit of expertise, right? 

 

So my answer to your question would be that, yes, probably there will be more and more tools for consultants, as there will be more and more tools for profs and for researchers. But that doesn’t sign all the end of the human expertise required.

 

Shruthi Prakash

It’s interesting because for me, this sounds like a flywheel essentially. So if you’re already expertise, then GenAI could help you reach that next level. So actually one of my questions was about the previous point you mentioned when you were speaking, it sort of struck to me that you had spoken about, let’s say, GenAI in the context of content and how it supports, let’s say, a consultant or knowledge work person’s sort of operations, but you can also see a lot of AI being already decision makers. 

So it is already used for otherwise human-driven decision-making, right? So that transition has already happened where your traditional forms of let’s say analysis, judgment, or pattern recognition that a consultant used to do is now being replaced essentially or being extended to AI. 

 

So how does that sort of, you know, take shape and where does the human expertise in terms of their value come in?

 

Louis-David Benyayer

Well, that’s true. That’s true that we have more and more automated decisions in algorithms. And it’s been 20 years that it started with recommendation algorithms and automated pricing, for example, and many, many different things. And it’s true that it could have happened also to consulting or strategic decisions. 

 

But I think there is one limit to what the AI tools could perform, it’s not about their capability of making an answer, because it’s likely that the systems would be able to make an answer given the data that they have been trained on and the computing power and blah, it’s that strategic decision-making is sometimes to do something never has been done before or is totally out of the scope of the frameworks. And it’s just a matter of illustration – you were mentioning Blue Ocean Strategy and one sentence of that book is really explaining this, right? 

 

Some people compete in existing markets, others invent new markets. It’s probably hard to identify an AI system that would have that kind of intention. So my point here is to say that when it comes to strategic decision making, not operational one, not transactional ones, when it comes to making long-term, hard-to-reverse decisions that would affect the scope of the organization, when it comes to making those decisions, the human component is still the one that makes the difference. 

 

In the two extremes of the process, what is the question that you’re asking and how you frame the question? And that’s still a human ability, or let’s say that’s where the value is for the human, right?

 

For example, how do you define your market? How big is how you define your market? What are the boundaries of your market? This is something that can be challenged and redefined, but when you’re asking an AI to do something, you start by defining, for example, the scope of the market. And maybe an individual will make a difference saying, okay, we’re not in that market, we are in that market. You know, it’s the sentence saying that we’re not in the entertainment business, but we’re in the time business, right? 

 

People that are for Netflix are not competing only with Disney Plus. They’re competing with Spotify. They’re competing with joggings, et cetera. And you get from that example that this is critically human to define this, right? 

And then at the other side, when it comes to solving trade-offs, dilemmas, this cannot be made, well, it can technically, right? But probably that it’s of a low value to have a machine solving these dilemmas or trade-offs, right? Which are choices between options that are not super clear to balance.

 

Simone Cicero

In the background I was trying to project some of these conversations that we were having. So let me be a bit provocative because we like it here. 

 

So consulting and education, especially in the last I mean, probably not in the last century, but in the last maybe 10 years, let’s say 10-15 years, with the emergence of all this content available for free, you know, from YouTube to the other educational platforms and, you know, the blog sphere and all these conversations that happen. So for example, now you can read John Cutler’s newsletter every week and you become the best product manager around, because he is sharing so much of his knowledge. And this knowledge is there available. And of course, now it’s been indexed by the AIs. 

 

So essentially, my impression is that the customers of a consulting business, to a certain extent, also the customers of an educational business, these are the lazy ones. So these are the ones that do not take the effort. They don’t want to do the work. They want somebody that does the work for them to some extent. given, let’s say that we assume that these are the lazy ones, right? 

 

With the emergence of reasoner models and models that go beyond the pure LLM, GenAI initial capabilities, we are looking into something that can really build the strategy, execute the strategy. 

 

So to some extent, I was thinking that the AI doesn’t need any consultant. So I’m assuming that in the market, we will have the lazy and the ones that instead are not lazy and then they can maybe leverage on AI capabilities to, for example, experiment much more in the market, bring much more throughput to the market, experiment and learn faster. 

 

Similar impacts that you mentioned for the consultants, so the met your effect that you mentioned, will also happen on the customer side. So the best will be better. The lazy would be putting into a corner if they don’t figure out what’s happening. And so I was thinking in this landscape, consultants are left and educators are left with either continue to sell their services to the lazy ones and to the ones that most likely will lose on this much more competitive and dynamic market.

 

Or the other option that they have is to become, I would say, actors on the market. So not selling consulting to someone that has the accountability and responsibility to create something of value on the market, but rather they will have to jump into the market to do products and services and things that can be consumed directly from somebody with a customer need, which is not that of, I’m lazy, I need a consultant. So what are your thoughts about this?

 

Louis-David Benyayer

Well, that’s a very stimulating question. think, first, I tend to agree with your last comment when I look at the evolution of some consulting firms that are now entering into that product, business model product, meaning digital product, right? We have seen over the last two or three years

 

Some companies, have, for example, Capgemini in mind, but it’s one example out of several, that said, we’ll not only, for example, for their clients, we’ll not only, for example, for a question on customer service or customer support, right, we’ll not only give you the benchmark, we’ll not only design the organization you need, we’ll not only design the specification of the tools, but we will provide you with a tool that would help you solving your customer support problem, right? Or improve your customer support. 

 

So that’s something that we already start seeing, right? Those consultants making the hard job of developing products that are consumed by clients, right? So that’s a view, right? That’s something that supports your view.

 

On the first part of your discussion, I don’t know if it’s about laziness and I get your provocative tone, but that’s an opportunity for me to maybe elaborate on what we discussed before with Shruthi is that when you go to consultant or when you go to university, it’s not only about the content or the efforts. It is about this.

 

but you’re looking for something else, right? When you’re going to university, you’re making a decision to learn with other people. And that’s a big difference, right? Because it’s about collective learning, but it’s also about bonding with people. It’s also about experimenting collective action. It’s also about exploring the benefits of the classroom, right? Physical or digital, the conversations that happen. Then when people go to some universities, they also go for that, they also go there for a label that they are able to use in the job market, right? 

 

We can discuss how relevant that labeling is, but it’s part of the reason why people go for university. Even if you’re the best expert self-trained on product management and that you say that you have read everything that’s possible and you have developed a very deep expertise, well, you don’t make it compared to someone that say, I did product management at MIT, right? It’s still a big difference. 

 

Even though maybe if you challenge both, on the same product management task, maybe one, the self-trained could perform better, right? But still, the one that went to MIT has a bit of a bonus when starting the conversation. When it comes to consulting, companies that are going for consulting are not only going for an additional brain or muscle boost. Sometimes they do, right? Because they are lacking skills and they are lacking capacity for making things happen.

 

Or maybe sometimes they don’t understand what to do, so they ask someone the question. But they also go to a consultant for two other types of value. One is about moving the organization around a transformation project, right? Getting the organization moving around. And you don’t do this with a digital tool, right? You do this because you have a plan, you have a project that leverages soft skills, that leverages leadership, that leverages many different things than just content. Content matters, right? Don’t get me wrong. 

 

But content only doesn’t change an organization. I guess you experienced this, right?

 

And then there is another thing why some companies go or some individuals at companies go to consultants is also to bring a bit of legitimacy. We’re going in that direction not only because we are the crazy guys of going in that direction, it’s because also some people that are experts in the field or experts into identifying new future directions have green-lighted that direction that we are taking. And for both aspects, I think it’s not about being lazy. It’s not about people are not just going for consulting because they’re desperate or they don’t understand or they don’t want to make the effort. It’s at some point they need a bit of something that is both symbolic and leadership that is not always the explicit driver for buying a consultant, right? 

 

People hardly knock your door, Simone and Shruthi, and say, hey, we need a bit of legitimacy and we need a bit of getting our organization around. They probably start the conversation slightly differently, right? On a more business-oriented topic or more organizational-oriented topic. But truth is that if they knock your door, that they’re expecting something else, right?

 

Simone Cicero

Shruthi, I know you have some questions, but I have something that I wanted to drop into this conversation again to kind of create a little bit more big picture. So we spoke about many things in this segment, right? We spoke about both education and consulting. 

 

You said consulting is not just, you know, it’s not just the content. that’s, think, something that we agree also because, if I look at what happened in consulting so far in last several couple of decades, we have already seen a lot of content being commoditized. So if you look at, for example, what strategizer have been doing, we have been doing our small niche. A lot of content went into canvases and guides and you know, Roger Martin has been reading tons of books. 

 

So you can just access this content very easily, right? And content is not differentiating. You also spoke about leadership and operational excellence that you can, you know, purchase from the consultants. And I recognize that there is a common thread with what’s happening in software as a service, right?

 

So what we are seeing in software as a service is that, and this is particularly clear if listeners are interested, you can check the growth buyout thesis from small ventures. So what many are saying is that you create a software solution. You automate a process. You create a better marginality. You are pretty sure that your approach is delivering better business outcomes for your vertical type customer. this case, can be somebody operating a parking space with Metropolis software, or it can be somebody running a golf course with verticals as for a golf course, whatever.

 

 And once you know that the solution you created is so beneficial, it’s so advanced, it generates better outcomes, better margins, you don’t just try to sell this, you actually purchase your customers.

 

You purchase with M&A private equity approach. You purchase the customer. And you run the business with better outcomes, generate better margin. And then you go ahead. You continue to do M&As and purchase. And this is, for example, what constellation software has been doing in the past or other companies are doing. So I’m thinking that companies that have a better understanding of how you run an organization, like consultants, should probably start to embrace the similar approach, especially those that are highly capitalized. They should be looking into private equity, M&As, acquiring customers. 

 

And then, for example, this is what, to some extent, what corporate rebel is doing with Krisos. They have a thesis in self-management. They’ve been purchasing companies, applying their self-management principles. And the companies that they have been purchasing is performing better. So that’s one direction.

 

And especially, think, for the large players, the ones that are able to at least, I mean, maybe not just the large, but the ones that are able to raise funds that can be used to purchase customers and improve. And of course, I guess that the customers that are interesting are the ones that are not in knowledge economy, because the knowledge economy is being commoditized heavily. companies that are doing real world business like, you retails or, you know, industry manufacturing, you know, agriculture, whatever. 

 

Then you also spoke about what else you buy from consultants and you mentioned something that, you know, looks into relationships, experience, belonging, okay. And this tells me about networks. You know, for example, we are seeing a lot of networks emerging around vertical topics where people meet each other. You created these niche specific networks that can deliver value in terms of relationship building, experience, belonging, and so on. 

 

So first of all, I see this before cash show. Either you go there or you go there. So either you go into niche networks, relationship and experience intensive, or you go into operational excellence, then you have to purchase your customer. 

 

That’s essentially a potential outcome that I see. Then in education, you also mentioned that aspect of credentials and an aspect of creating curated programs. And here, I think I’m more concerned because on the education side, credentialism is really going away. think most of the people that we talk to don’t really trust credentials – much more, at least the high performance. 

And curation, yeah, you’re right. An education program needs to be curated. It needs to be handpicked. But I’m pretty sure that GenAI is going to achieve this curation capability soon. 

Because with the reasoner models, this is something that can happen at a very niche scale. So for example, I have a team of five. I need to train them. I can explain my needs to a gen AI. And this gen AI will create a curated content training for me. This is going to happen. We see the deep research. We see that these models are becoming so much better at doing so. So this is the landscape I see. And I see, as a recap, education is in a very hard place at the moment, I believe; consulting should go either into networks or into raising funds, purchasing customers, purchasing companies. And this is something we see because already the private equity players are much more inclined to transforming the management structures and the operating models of the company. So for example, if you look into what either Bending Spoon is doing with digital companies that they’re purchasing, they transform it widely. 

 

So they actually are a mix between a consulting company and a private equity fund that purchases companies. So those are a few bits. I don’t know if you want to come back to this or we leave it to Shruthi.

 

Louis-David Benyayer 

Well, just one quick comment. I think it’s a very interesting, let’s say, description of the alternatives. Just what I can say on your point on mergers and acquisitions for consulting. This is something that echoes some actions by some of them. For example, Bain has been having Bain Capital for a few decades, right? It’s probably in that view, right?

 

On education, I have a slightly different perspective because from what we see at ESCP and more globally in business school at large is that we have more and more people knocking at the door that are looking for those credentials. And we have more and more companies that are asking us to be very clear on what is included in the diploma and what other skills that people are getting. 

 

So I tend to have a slightly different view and even more when we take a global picture, meaning the whole world, that could be true what you’re mentioning for Western students, but when you look at other countries all over the world, India, Indonesia, China has been already made major progress on this, but these countries which have massive young generations to be trained, they’re not likely to buy them a subscription to an online podcast, right? They want them to have proper degree on something. So that’s a way to maybe, I’m not advocating against your view. I’m saying maybe that it could be one view or one reality of the education market, but there are other components of that market.

 

Simone Cicero 

Right.

 

Shruthi Prakash

Yeah, I can add to that as well. Like I had actually written a very similar point that even in India, I would say the systems of education are changing on the basis of business requirements. I see that a lot transition happening and let’s say EduTech and all of that has sort of seen its death as well in India now, but there are let’s say new organizations, schools coming up, universities coming up which are specifically designed for hands on courses which connect you back to the industry and so on. So that model has sort of seen a shift lately. So that’s where for me as well I had a question that should universities then rethink its fundamental purpose?

 

Because like you said, let’s say one of the advantages that it serves is the community aspect of it, right? So other than maybe passing on knowledge and problem solving skills and so on, the community aspect of it is something that is a big sort of boon to it. So one, do you see that we should rethink it, revisit it, not just in terms of like courses teaching GenAI, but essentially from the beginning, sort of re-visualize how a university looks, especially considering that the accessibility to information and like deep knowledge and deep information is at one of its highest peak, right? 

 

So that’s, yeah, that’s something I’m curious about.

 

Louis-David Benyayer 

Yeah, I think it’s true to say that digital in general, because it’s been a decade that that movement has started with the first massive online open courses and that started that discussion already at that time. It’s true that universities are getting the question about what are they worth, right? What is the value they provide and how they get organized to this, to provide that value. It’s interesting to see that a lot of universities are making big investments in their facilities. They also are investing in digital technologies, but they continue investing in the places, which means something, right? It means that the place and the fact that people are together is part of the core of university. 

 

But it’s true to say that in that very different world and in that very different business world, the question about what should we train young adults on is becoming more important even, right? You were mentioning hard skills or let’s say competencies for the job market. It’s one of them, right? For sure. But we also get often the question about, but what are the core capabilities that we need any business leader to have or any manager to have, right?

 

And when you name things like critical thinking, creativity, soft skills, you don’t get them with a vocational training, with a seminar or a few workshops, right? It’s something that you need to develop more profoundly. And if so, then it’s not through an online platform or a generative AI tool. Even if it’s the best of the world and it can propose, right? So I think I share your view that universities are getting more and more the question about, but what’s important for them to learn, right? What’s important for our students to learn? What is important for our students to develop as skills? And it’s not only job-related skills, or let’s say directly job-related skills. There are other things.

 

I think when I discuss with my colleagues around in other countries, we all share the same type of perspective on this, right? That, okay, we need to get more explicit about what we are training our students on, which is not only the job requirements of the job description of the young graduates.

 

Because just one last comment. Education is a long-term investment, right? You usually have it once in a lifetime. Some people go and train themselves again, but let’s say the majority of us do this once in a lifetime. And it’s designed for equipping you with solid foundations for a long time, Not only the last thing on the hype cycle of Gothner, right?

 

Shruthi Prakash 

Yeah, just a quick point. So I like also see a lot of this anti sort of argument also coming up. So yesterday I was reading, it’s not totally related, but I just wanted to state it. So yesterday I was reading that there is a lot of movement back to your community driven or people driven sort of solutions to problems. So for example, they had quoted how if you were to become a music artist, and let’s say put your song on Spotify versus, you know, go the traditional route of maybe selling CDs. You have to sell like a hundred CDs, for example, to earn thousand dollars versus you have to have your song streamed like 300,000 times in order for you to earn the same amount, right? 

 

So there are, there is a significant shift or an anti sort of argument for people to move into or you know reconsider going back to traditional sort of mediums as well. I found that very interesting. Yeah.

 

Simone Cicero

No, mean, since we are approaching the end of the conversation, I would love to give you a space, in case something that we didn’t mention today you believe is very relevant to this conversation. I think it’s a good idea to have this final reflection.

 

Louis-David Benyayer

Well, think what… The question I have in mind for myself is about that combination, Hybridization between the tools and the human expertise or contribution. So to make it very short, it’s not about either or, right, to use them or not. It’s more about if and how, when we go more granular in processes, situations, sequences. 

 

I think if we take it from that perspective, not to have, let’s say, a black or white vision. I’m sure you don’t have that kind of thing, right? But if we want to move away from this, we need to be much more granular. For example, how should we use generative AI in class? If you ask the either or question, the debate is very short. But if you get more granular, like if you say, OK, let’s have 120 minutes session. Let’s see how could that work, right? If we divide, what would be the objective of using it now after that step? What would that bring to the table, right? 

 

So I think collectively, whether for consulting or education, asking us the question about the details of when and how would help us to get a better, let’s say, perspective.

 

Simone Cicero

Yeah, mean, overall, think it’s very much of getting real moment for consulting and really understand the value. Especially, I think I like the last point that you made. It’s going to be a mix of the human touch, all the things that we mentioned before. But if we focus on delivering value to customers as educators and consultants, it’s going to be a mix of tools, practices, methodologies, but also there is a human touch. 

And we really need to understand what this human touch is about and what is the value that we bring to the table. And we are facing these conversations already with customers. So we know that, for example, moving into outcome-based contracting and things like that, it’s really, really on the table of everyone at the moment. But I think overall what we can agree on is that it’s really a reckoning moment for these industries at the moment, right? 

 

So GenAI is going to really push us to understand how we move the needle, you know? Otherwise, you know, surviving through this wave is gonna be very hard for those that do not have a clear idea of how they are making a difference for customers. 

 

So I think this is really, really important to say. So as a closing moment, maybe, we always have a space for guests to share what we call the breadcrumbs. So any breadcrumb that you want to share with our listeners.

 

Louis-David Benyayer

Well, think something I can share are people that I learned from that helped me building my perspective. In education and GenAI, there is one in particular that I’m following. I guess you know him. It’s Ethan Mollick from Wharton. He’s a very very good researcher and teacher and I think there’s so many things I learned from him. In the same space on a different note there is another geek prof. He’s based in Germany but I think he was born in the Netherlands. He’s called Dries Vans and he’s also quite active on LinkedIn and he has started a YouTube channel when he shares all of these, his tips and tricks. 

 

So he’s much, even more hands-on than Ethan. He produces the tools and he shares them. So that’s another maybe thing, another person I could hook our listeners to.

 

Simone Cicero 

Right, you will have to help us with the spelling, but I think we will be able to put this in the notes. I mean, it was an amazing conversation. I think we got into some very interesting and very crucial and very clear bits in whoever is either leveraging on consultants for strategy and other elements or whoever is doing consulting. But I would say also whoever is doing services, you know, we’re working in the service industry education, I think we’ll get some very clear idea or, know, in terms of what questions you should be asking at the moment, you know, and how to look into the future, you know, with everything that’s happening. 

 

Anything you want to add for people to follow your work?

 

Louis-David Benyayer

Yeah, so I have a website with my name. And then if you’re interested, you can subscribe to a newsletter I have. It’s called Datanomics and Strategy. And it’s about business strategy in that world full of data and AI.

 

Simone Cicero

Thank you so much. hope you also enjoyed the conversation like we did. Thank you. Shruthi, thanks for your questions, as always.

 

Louis-David Benyayer 

I did.

 

Shruthi Prakash 

Thank you. Thanks, Louis. Thanks, Simone.

 

Simone Cicero

Thank you so much. And for our listeners, of course, you can find all the podcast notes detailed on our website. If you go to www.boundaryless.io/resources/podcast, you will find this episode with all the notes and the YouTube video and everything else. And until we speak again, of course, remember to think Boundaryless.