Am AI ready? Investigating the impacts of Artificial Intelligence on business within the automotive industry

Abstract

In today’s world, technology is present everywhere, and it is progressing at such speed that it is increasingly hard for organizations to cope. The disruptive force and power of new technology are especially observable in how they can transform and fundamentally change businesses and their way of generating value. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one example of such a technology that is believed to have the potential to unleash the next rush of disruption in many industries and the expectations on AI are therefore sky-high. However, from a business perspective, research on the actual impact of AI has lacked focus. Hence this research aims to investigate the impact of AI on business, looking at companies within the automotive industry. This is done by analyzing AI’s specific impact on different components of the business model through the lens of both degrees of impact and time. The insights of the impact are gathered through a qualitative study of companies within the automotive industry or companies with the automotive industry as the primary focus of their business. The findings show that AI is impacting business models within the automotive industry on a broad scale. AI is primarily enabling automotive companies to leverage data about their customer, intensifying the degree to which the companies collaborate with partners, both cross-industry and within the industry. Furthermore, the long-term expectations of the technology are impacting on strategic decisions and positioning made by automotive companies. AI is expected to enable fully autonomous driving which has led companies to reconsider their business models, and the impacts are likely to get even more observable as the technology matures further.