What is Happening to your Business Model?
- Liza Engel
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
I recently read a story in a hotel magazine about a mountain restaurant above Oeschinensee in Switzerland. It’s surrounded by peaks, reachable only by cable car or with a hike for the more adventurous — the last place you’d expect to find automation or AI.
Yet, the owners installed modern kitchen technology that streamlines food preparation, reduces labour strain and food waste. They did it to stay viable. Even at 1,500 meters, they saw the shift coming.
Tourism has surged, and it’s become almost impossible to find enough staff — or affordable housing for them in the area. Their solution? More automation.
That image has stayed with me because it captures the moment every leader now faces: how to embrace technology not for its own sake, but to stay sustainable, resilient, and human.
For decades, business models had a comfortable shelf life. You could build something solid and adjust every few years.
Today, that rhythm doesn’t hold. AI and automation are compressing time. What once stayed relevant for years might lose its edge in months.
In 2025, your business model is a living system — one that needs constant scanning, testing, and small shifts to stay healthy.
AI is rewriting economics, not just processes
AI doesn’t just change how we deliver work. It alters the cost structure, margins, and customer expectations that shape entire industries.
Marketing agencies now compete with AI-driven platforms that produce quality creative work in minutes.
Coaches and consultants scale their impact through digital tools that replicate structure and accountability.
Small businesses automate support and operations at a fraction of the cost they paid two years ago.
This isn’t a passing trend — it’s a lasting shift in how value is created and captured.
As Bain’s 2025 Technology Report notes, AI is reshaping competition at every level — from infrastructure to customer experience.
Every leader has a choice
You can hold on — or lead with intention.
That means using technology to create space for what humans do best: creativity, empathy, and meaningful connection.
If your offers look increasingly similar to what software can do, or if your cost base grows faster than your revenue, it’s time to pause and re-examine.
Here are four quick signals your model might be aging:
Rising costs, flat margins
Manual processes customers now expect to be automated
Offers that feel interchangeable with AI alternatives
Little or no experimentation with digital or AI tools
The 3-S framework
Refreshing your business model doesn’t mean tearing it down. It means running regular, deliberate experiments.
1. Scan
Ask: What’s changing around me — technology, behavior, competition?
Do: Schedule quarterly horizon scans.
2. Stress test
Ask: If I were an AI-first startup, how would I disrupt my business?
Do: Challenge your cost base and delivery model.
3. Shift
Ask: What small, testable change can I try next?
Do: Run one experiment per quarter.
Small, consistent shifts build resilience more quickly than one major reinvention.
The leadership stretch
Take 30 minutes this week to reflect with your team:
What’s changed most in your market over the past 12 months?
Where might your model be vulnerable to automation or AI disruption?
What small, low-risk experiment could you run next quarter to explore new value?
Then block one hour to act on it — not to plan, but to start.
Reflection
If a mountain restaurant can automate to stay relevant, any leader can reimagine how value is delivered.
And yet, the same weekend I read that story, I had dinner with my family at the Restaurant Zoe in Bern, a restaurant where vegetables take the center stage and where everything was beautifully sourced and prepared by hand. The care, the warmth, the intention — it reminded me that progress and presence can coexist.
This is what leadership with intention looks like: improving efficiency not to do more, but to make space for what matters — the moments of connection, creativity, and meaning that no machine can replicate.
Refreshing your business model yearly isn’t about fear — it’s about stewardship. Leaders who combine efficiency with humanity won’t just keep up with AI — they’ll set the pace for what comes next.
I‘ll let you chew on that.
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