Your company is spending real money on AI and the CFO wants to know what it is getting back. David Rogers calls the awkward silence that follows the AI value gap.
David Rogers wrote the first book on digital transformation. He returns to The Innovation Show to unpack the AI value gap, drawing on a Harvard Business Review article he co-wrote with Krishnan Sankaranarayanan, who leads AI transformation at Eastman. When AI fails to show up in the financial results, David traces the shortfall to strategy, and he shows leaders how to fix it.
In this conversation, David Rogers reveals:
• Why one minute saved by AI vanishes in one company and transforms another
• The AI value equation, and why its three factors multiply
• Why handing AI to a team with no P&L ownership kills the return
• The “magic wand” myth that frontier labs sell to executives
• How AI drones cut plant downtime by 30 to 40 percent in oil and gas
• Why Netflix points its AI at customer retention instead of acquisition
• How two chemical companies in the same industry need completely different AI bets
• The one discipline to apply before you start any AI pilot
Chapters
00:00 What is a value driver?
01:45 Why AI fails to show up in financial results
03:00 The AI value gap and the awkward CFO conversation
08:10 Why one minute saved can vanish or transform a business
12:30 The AI value equation
15:00 Four reasons companies skip strategic alignment
23:40 Step one, define your value drivers
27:10 Step two, know where you sit in the value chain
30:30 Step three, trace opportunities to the income statement
33:00 Step four, decide how you will measure financial return
34:40 Listener question on AI adoption and organisational change
37:40 Strategy is your moat
39:00 David’s next book on transformation in the AI era
Resources
The AI Value Gap Is a Strategy Problem: https://davidrogersdigital.substack.com/p/the-ai-value-gap-is-a-strategy-problem
Harvard Business Review article: https://bit.ly/HBR-Value-Gap-SS
David’s website: https://davidrogers.digital
David’s books: https://www.amazon.ie/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3ADavid%2BL.%2BRogers
More from David Rogers on The Innovation Show
The Digital Transformation Roadmap Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efliq61GF9M
The Digital Transformation Roadmap Part 2: https://youtu.be/Wd5Av-8ME6Y
Digital Transformation Playbook (10 Years On): https://youtu.be/z7eNk-J0KV0
About David Rogers
David Rogers is a globally recognised authority on digital transformation and a longtime faculty member at Columbia Business School. He is the author of The Digital Transformation Roadmap, The Digital Transformation Playbook and The Network Is Your Customer.
About the Host
Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). Learn more at https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen
About The Innovation Show
The Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world’s leading businesses. Learn more at https://www.kyndryl.com
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Website: https://theinnovationshow.io
