The Ground Shifts Beneath Us

Perspective may indeed be the future of strategy—but not because it is fashionable, or because creativity suddenly discovered its voice. Perspective is rising in value because everything else is quietly being automated out from under us. Artificial intelligence has not just entered the room; it has rearranged the furniture. Technical skill, once the sacred currency of the creative economy, is becoming an abundant, frictionless good. Knowledge, once hoarded and sold by the hour, is now instantly accessible. If your business model still depends on billable hours, proprietary know‑how, or execution as its own defense, you are sitting on a crumbling foundation.

The Vanishing Value of Technical Labor

The agency model has long been an economy of hours. The more time consumed in production—designing layouts, drafting copy, stitching together research decks—the more revenue justified. But time has lost its grip as the governing metric. Tasks that once demanded days of labor and deep specialization are being compressed into minutes by AI systems that never sleep. Design templates appear on demand. Copy is generated with the cadence of a keystroke. Data can be parsed and summarized at scales no human team could match.

This is the flattening effect: where scarcity once conferred value, ubiquity erodes it. What was once gated by expertise is now democratized by tools, and the field is leveled almost overnight.

Insights Won’t Save You

In response to automation, many firms retreated into the high ground of “insight.” Execution may be mechanical, they argued, but synthesis and strategy remain human. Yet even here, the fortress is showing cracks. AI does not merely automate data collection; it interprets, predicts, and reframes. Market research reports, customer journey analyses, competitive landscapes—deliverables that once distinguished the premium tier of consultancy—are now churned out at speed, with surprising competence.

The uncomfortable reality is that insight, once the citadel of differentiation, is becoming a commodity as well. When everyone has access to the same interpretations, however elegantly packaged, they cease to carry margin. Insight without distinct perspective is just another data point in a sea of reports.

The Coming Collapse of Margin

Margins in creative services have always relied on some form of scarcity: scarce talent, scarce tools, scarce time. AI collapses all three. It creates infinite supply of technical labor, compresses cycles of production, and equips even novices with once‑specialized skills. Efficiency, long a badge of operational excellence, becomes the minimum expectation. Competing on speed or price is no longer strategy; it is surrender.

As clients grow aware of what these tools can deliver, they will not reward humans for doing what machines now perform “well enough.” Technical labor as the core revenue engine is already in decline, and the erosion of margin will only accelerate.

The Warning to Creative Services

If your model depends on execution or insight alone, you are already on the road to flattening. Do not mistake rational walkthroughs for defensible value. Clients can—and will—ask an algorithm to explain the data, surface the correlations, and outline the options. They do not need another sober recitation of logic when a machine can generate one instantly.

The harsh but necessary truth is this: survival will not come from knowledge or efficiency. Those have been claimed by the machine. What remains is the domain of the human: judgment, context, and perspective. Clinging to the old margins is an act of denial.

Conclusion — Flattened or Future-Proof?

The question that looms is disarmingly simple: When everyone has the same tools and the same knowledge, what is left of your value? For those unwilling to face the answer, the flattening will be swift. But for those prepared to confront it, the opening is profound. The creative field does not vanish; it metamorphoses. The next defensible margin will not be labor or knowledge but perspective—an act of synthesis, subjectivity, and meaning that machines can mimic but never inhabit.