Most companies pouring money into AI are getting almost nothing back — and the reason is strategic, not technical. In “When Developing an AI Strategy, Beware the Urgency Trap” (HBR, July 2026), David De Cremer draws on findings that the overwhelming majority of generative AI projects fail and that roughly nine in ten senior executives report no measurable productivity gain from three years of AI adoption. His diagnosis: leaders aim AI at whatever looks urgent — bottlenecks, costs, slow workflows — because those problems are visible and defensible. But AI pointed at urgent problems only accelerates what already exists. It doesn’t build anything a competitor can’t buy next quarter, and it burns out the people running faster on the same treadmill. The organisations getting real AI ROI start somewhere else entirely: with purpose, and with the question of what durable value they want the technology to create.

For IP-intensive businesses, this has a sharp edge, because everything AI accelerates is available to your competitors at the same subscription price. Speed gains get competed away; what remains is whatever you own that others cannot copy — your patents, brands, trade secrets and data. So the purpose-driven question De Cremer urges becomes, in IP terms: is AI helping you file faster, or helping you build a more defensible position? A firm using AI to churn out more of the same deliverables gains months; a firm using it to map competitor white space, strengthen invention capture and free its people for judgment work gains a moat. This is the pattern we examined in AI Isn’t Your Advantage—Your IP Strategy Is, and it starts with leadership discipline — Your IP Strategy Is Only as Good as Your Board’s Questions — because rushed deployment carries real risk, as we flagged in Your AI Agent Won’t Keep a Secret. The takeaway: before your next AI initiative, ask what proprietary, protectable value it will leave behind in two years. If the honest answer is “none — just speed,” you’ve found the urgency trap.