How to Create Value with AI

In our first piece, we built the foundations of AI knowledge. In our second, we used that knowledge to create a strategic blueprint for planning and prioritization. Now, we arrive at the final, most critical question: How do we build a rock-solid business case for this transformation?

A blueprint is a plan, but a business case is what secures a budget. A C-level leader needs to be able to translate a strategic roadmap into a clear, quantified financial model.

In my experience, the most successful AI strategies don't just focus on one type of value. They create a powerful, dual-engine approach to ROI. I call this the "Defense and Offense" model for AI value creation. "Defense" is about protecting your bottom line by increasing efficiency. "Offense" is about driving your top line by creating new opportunities.

Let's break down how to measure both.

The Defensive Play: The Optimization Method

The most direct and tangible way to measure AI's value is through cost savings and operational efficiency. This is your defensive strategy. It's about taking the work you are already doing and doing it faster, cheaper, and with fewer errors. This is the language that resonates with a CFO and an operations leader.

The formula is straightforward:
ROI = (Human Hours Saved per Workflow) x (Fully-Loaded Cost of Labor)

When we built our workflow catalog in the previous phase, we identified the "Operate" tasks — the repetitive, process-driven work that consumes a disproportionate amount of your team's time. These are the prime targets for the Optimization Method.

Imagine a workflow for generating weekly sales reports that takes a team member 5 hours every week. By deploying an L2 AI-Augmented automation, you reduce that time to 30 minutes. You haven't just saved 4.5 hours; you've liberated that team member to spend that time on higher-value "Create" or "Innovate" tasks.

When you apply this calculation across dozens of "Operate" workflows, the cost savings can be immense. This is the foundational, bottom-line value that a disciplined AI strategy can unlock. It is the first, most tangible return on your investment.

The Offensive Play: The Opportunity Creation Method

Saving money is a powerful motivator, but the true, category-defining power of AI lies in its ability to create entirely new forms of value. This is your offensive strategy. It's about using AI to do things that were previously impossible, impractical, or cost-prohibitive. This is the language that resonates with a CEO, a Board of Directors, and a venture capitalist.

This method is less about direct calculation and more about modeling second-order effects.

Imagine your product development process. Historically, your team's velocity allowed you to ship and test two major new feature ideas per quarter. Now, by deeply integrating AI-Assisted (L1) and AI-Augmented (L2) automations into your coding, QA, and documentation workflows, you have unlocked a significant productivity boost.

Your team can now ship and test ten major feature ideas per quarter.

What is the value of that?

• You are getting five times more "at-bats" to find a product-market fit for a new feature without having to invest five time more capital.
• You are learning five times faster than your competition.
• You are dramatically increasing the probability of discovering a new, multi-million dollar revenue stream.

This is opportunity creation. It's not about saving an hour of a developer's time; it's about fundamentally changing the growth trajectory of your entire business. This is the value unlocked when you use AI to free your team from "Operate" tasks and empower them to focus on "Innovate."

The Virtuous Cycle

A mature AI strategy doesn't treat this as an "either/or" choice. A true AI-Native company understands that Defense and Offense are part of a virtuous cycle.

The capital you save through Optimization is the very resource you can reinvest into more ambitious Opportunity Creation projects. The efficiency gains from automating "Operate" tasks are what provide the human talent and the financial runway to take bigger swings at "Innovate" tasks.

This is the engine of capital-efficient growth that AI can help unlock.

This entire financial and strategic model is the reason we built Orbit. It is designed not just to catalog your workflows, but to provide a single command center where you can model and track both the defensive and offensive value of your AI initiatives. It gives you the financial picture, allowing you to build a business case that is not only ambitious but also intellectually honest and operationally sound.

This completes our foundational trilogy on AI strategy. We have moved from the "what" to the "how," and finally, to the "why bother." The path is clear. The value is quantifiable. The advantage is waiting for the leaders who are disciplined enough to seize it.