Why do businesses invest in software?

This is a hard question to answer. Because we naturally inject some sense of self into this question. I’ll ask another.

What do businesses precisely do with software?

This is an easier question. Businesses use software to scale some parts of their work. Faster communication, better documentation, more outreach, and so on.

Notice how even though the questions sound very similar, the first feels very personal and difficult to put into words. The answer is aspirational. The second feels less so.

Every software sale and every digital strategy sits in the gap between these two answers.

If you can understand this perspective, every software decision you make will be infinitely easier. From procuring it, to adoption, training, strategy, even hiring decisions around technology. All become easier. Because you’ll learn how to stop confusing these two things, and you’ll see how most people still do.

It all has to do with what I call “tractable” problems.

Take marketing for example.

What makes a good ad? Another hard question. A good ad can be memorable, it can be well placed, it can be beautiful. Notice how even the definition of good marketing is intangible. What makes something memorable or beautiful or well placed?

Software always flips the question. It doesn’t say, what is a good ad? It asks, which ad did more people click on? Which one resulted in more sales? Which one converted more?

Suddenly, we have a problem that is solvable. One that we have answers for. We’ve managed to take a judgement-driven problem and turned parts of it tractable.

All software strategy decides which parts are tractable for any specific problem. All software scales those tractable parts.

Most people intuit that using software doesn’t solve the original problem. It doesn’t make better ads. But that’s the point.

Given that we’re now at a junction where software is fundamentally changing with AI, it’s important to reckon with the fact that what makes businesses isn’t necessarily what makes good jobs or fun jobs.

People look at jobs like software engineering, marketing, product management, even sales, and they see a craft they’re willing to pursue. A craft they want to get better at. They see business objectives through that lens.

How can I produce beautiful code, while shipping product features? How can I produce memorable ads while improving our brand? How do I create enjoyable product experiences while improving user retention?

And when we use software, we look at the software through that lens. Which software helps me produce ads that are beautiful, and scale our brand? When in reality, the workflow the software encodes only does the second part. It helps you scale your brand, but it doesn’t improve your judgement.

The same goes for writing code, for doing sales, for creating products.

All that to say that AI will not need judgement to make your way of work obsolete. AI will scale the tractable parts of the workflow so far that your hand-crafted way of work will be unable to compete.

Whether that’s writing code that just manages to work, or producing ad copy that is grammatically correct, or producing images and videos that are just realistic enough to get some results. The scale at which they do those things is what will produce the alpha.

That’s what software has always done. And it will continue to do so. Understand the difference between tractable and intractable problems, apply them to your strategy, and build a business around it. Train your team to understand this perspective.