01 Your value stack
AI Value Stack & Agentic Architecture
Which of your capabilities does AI commoditise, and which does it elevate into new control points?
AI is restructuring the value stack of every industry - making some capabilities commoditised and others suddenly central. The question is which side of that line your firm sits on, and what new positions become possible.
Value migrates. Position before it settles.
▍ A quick check
Early signs.
- Capabilities that were your differentiation are starting to feel like table stakes.
- You're shipping AI use cases but can't say how they change your competitive position.
- It's unclear which parts of your value stack will commoditise and which will become control points.
- New entrants are attacking layers of the stack you aren't even defending.
If two or more land, this is likely your question.
▍ The argument underneath
Why this matters.
If you read one section, read this. The argument the engagement is built on, from the ground up.
- 01
Value migrates when the constraint moves
Value concentrates wherever the scarce constraint sits. When AI removes a scarcity - execution cost, expertise, access - value does not disappear. It migrates to whatever is now the binding constraint. Firms that double down on what they used to do best are the ones that get stranded.
- 02
AI commoditises execution and elevates coordination
AI is very good at the steps inside a workflow and structurally weak at the seams between workflows. So it commoditises manual expertise, workflow ownership, and interface control - and elevates coordination, verification, and cross-actor orchestration. The value stack re-sorts along exactly that line.
- 03
Control points are where capture concentrates
A control point is a capability the rest of the system has to route through. As AI re-sorts the stack, new control points open and old ones commoditise. Durable strategy is about occupying the control points that are forming - not defending the ones that are dissolving.
▍ The work itself
Our work together.
4 phases. Each builds on the last - from analysis to a blueprint you can act on.
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Map the value stack
Translate customer needs and workflows into the underlying capabilities that support or constrain them. Work the structure of the value stack across the domain rather than a single workflow.
Deliverable A value stack map: the capability layers beneath the domain and where coordination currently breaks down.
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Assess AI's effect on each capability
For each capability, assess how AI changes its economics: reducing coordination cost, widening decision support, enabling continuous compliance and proof, allowing agentic execution across disconnected steps.
Deliverable An AI-impact assessment showing which capabilities weaken as differentiators and which strengthen.
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Identify migrating value and new control points
Trace where value migrates as capabilities re-sort, which actors gain or lose influence, and which capabilities become the new control points worth owning.
Deliverable A value migration analysis with a prioritised set of control points.
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Convert to strategic moves
Convert the analysis into a portfolio of high-leverage positions: where to own, where to partner, where to commoditise, where to build horizontal infrastructure, where vertical plays still hold.
Deliverable A system-level strategy blueprint with monetisation logic and a portfolio of testable strategic moves.
▍ A recent engagement
Medical devices & clinical therapy
Value-stack and control-point analysis
Reconstructed the value drivers across the care pathway - from device selection and procurement through therapy delivery to outcome tracking - and mapped how value had historically been captured through product features, pricing, and channels. Then assessed how AI changes the economics of those drivers: reducing fragmentation in clinical and procedural data, enabling continuous outcome measurement, improving comparability across providers and interventions.
▸ The shift
Outcome. Reframed the client's strategy from competing on device-level differentiation to capturing value through AI-enabled outcome measurement and coordination layers - with defensible new control points around benchmarking and decision support.
Let's discuss further.
If this question is in front of your team, the next step is a short call to scope it. Tell us what you're working through and we'll figure out together whether this is the right place to start.
Let's set up a call▍ Or read first
Further reading.
Short essays from the Reshuffle series that build the argument behind this work.