There’s no universal playbook for what AI First means, but I've come to define it like this. Treated as an organizational mindset, it offers a practical framework for capturing AI’s potential and embedding it into culture:

AI First is an organizational mindset infused with curiosity, proactivity, and experimentation, aimed at embracing AI’s potential to drive innovation, elevate thinking, enhance efficiency, and unlock new opportunities for growth.

Before breaking down that definition, one point is crucial: AI First is a mindset.

Just as growth or abundance mindsets help you see challenges as opportunities, an AI First mindset allows you to reinterpret what’s possible. It’s a disposition that you and your team cultivate—an openness to the future at a moment when AI raises more questions than answers. Its novelty fuels uncertainty, and uncertainty tempts withdrawal. But withdrawal is exactly the wrong response.

AI First, Explained

The traits that animate an AI First mindset are curiosity, proactivity, and experimentation.

• Curiosity signals openness and a willingness to learn.

• Proactivity matters because these technologies don’t come with instruction manuals. You need to build playbooks for both how you’ll use them and to what end.

• Experimentation is essential because testing, learning what works (and why), is the only path to realizing meaningful gains.

An AI First mindset positions you to embrace AI’s potential. And we now know—with certainty—that AI can fulfill several promises: it can drive innovation, elevate thinking, automate the tasks you’d rather not do, and unlock opportunities for growth that you hadn’t even considered.

Even if all you do is adopt this mindset, you’ll already be ahead of competitors still “waiting to see what happens.” The economic advantage is real, including a measurable lift in EBITDA—around 10% over 12–18 months—when AI transformation is approached with seriousness.

Why It Matters

The beauty of an AI First mindset lies in its simplicity. It doesn’t require massive upfront investment or organizational overhaul. What it requires is something more fundamental: a shift in how you and your organization think about the future.

By embracing curiosity over certainty, proactivity over reactivity, and experimentation over hesitation, you don’t just participate in the AI revolution—you help shape it. And that may be the most important competitive advantage of all.