Insights

When wages get expensive, capital gets creative. Four centuries of evidence show the same feedback loop at work today. The Pattern That Keeps Repeating For the past four hundred years, wages and technology have chased each other in a recurring loop. When labour markets tighten and pay rises, businesses find it profitable to invent machines that replace workers. Those machines raise output per worker but destroy the livelihoods of people whose skills they have made redundant.

Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than most firms can think, let alone act. Systems that once looked experimental now reshape markets in real time, turning comfortable business assumptions into historical curiosities in a matter of months. The question for leaders is no longer whether to engage, but what sort of organisation they intend to run once the dust settles. From tinkering to direction Many firms are busy launching pilots, buying tools, commissioning dashboa