“It will be comparable with the Industrial Revolution. But instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it's going to exceed people in intellectual ability.”
In 1879, Edison invented the lightbulb. Electric motors became available. You'd think factories would immediately become more productive, right?
For 40 years — nothing.
Factories were designed for steam power: one big steam engine, connected to every machine via belts and pulleys. When they “adopted” electricity, they just replaced the steam engine with an electric motor. Same building, same layout, same belts.
The tool changed. The process didn't. And that's why nothing improved.
The breakthrough came when engineers stopped asking “how do we use this motor?” and started asking “how should the factory work?” They redesigned the process from scratch - single-floor layouts, each machine with its own motor, arranged by workflow instead of power source. Process redesign, not tool adoption, is what doubled productivity.
Belt-driven factory floor, circa 1900: one steam engine powers every machine through a maze of belts and pulleys. Replace the engine with an electric motor and nothing changes — same layout, same constraints, same bottlenecks.
Photo: Jet Lowe / HAER, Library of Congress (public domain)
The Adoption Gap
“88% of companies have adopted AI. Only 6% are transforming their business with it.”
Using AI
Real impact
More likely to redesign workflows
Years electricity took
Process is king. The 6% who see real impact aren't the ones with the best AI tools - they're the ones who redesigned their workflows around AI. The tool is the motor. The process is the factory.
Source: Anthropic – Labor market impacts of AI