AI in PracticeAug 30, 2026high
Small businesses are getting a second-mover advantage in AI
Small businesses do not need to copy every AI experiment from large companies. Their advantage is that big companies have already made many of the expensive mistakes in public: over-automation, unclear disclosure, weak training, messy governance, and tools that sound useful but do not fit the work.
Why it matters: The next phase of AI adoption may be won by businesses that stay boring in the right ways: customer support drafts, admin cleanup, marketing variants, document search, and internal assistants with clear limits. Value will come from fit, not spectacle.