[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":562},["ShallowReactive",2],{"content-query-RftInTZll1":3},[4,425],{"_path":5,"_dir":6,"_draft":7,"_partial":7,"_locale":8,"title":9,"description":10,"published":11,"author":12,"head":17,"tags":22,"body":29,"_type":419,"_id":420,"_source":421,"_file":422,"_stem":423,"_extension":424},"/insights/knowledge-is-no-longer-leverage","insights",false,"en","Knowledge is no longer leverage","AI helps the companies that copy more than the ones that lead. A product that takes a year to build and improve can now be copied within months, and soon within weeks, which is why leads like Photoshop's and AutoCAD's, held for decades, are unlikely to last.","24 Oct 2026",{"name":13,"title":14,"src":15,"width":16,"height":16,"authorLoaded":7},"Mario Adabachy","Founder & Managing Director","/team/mario-adabachy-4.webp",1254,{"description":18,"meta":19},"AI helps the companies that copy more than the ones that lead. What that means for professions and businesses that relied on knowledge.",[20],{"name":21,"content":13},"author",[23],{"name":24,"bg":25,"text":26,"hoverBg":27,"hoverText":28},"our-takes","#FFE6E6","#CC0000","#FFC7C7","#990000",{"type":30,"children":31,"toc":409},"root",[32,51,58,99,233,238,242,248,253,317,348,354,359,365,379,385,390,404],{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":35,"children":36},"element","p",{},[37,40,49],{"type":38,"value":39},"text","Knowledge no longer protects the professionals and businesses that rely on it. A professional's expertise used to be scarce enough to justify the price of their time. A new product was protected by how much it cost a competitor to copy it. AI now supplies much of that expertise and has cut the cost of copying. Yet most businesses still work, price and plan as though expertise were scarce. In the United Kingdom, 35% of businesses with ten or more employees use some form of AI, but only one in ten of those uses it extensively (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":42,"children":46},"a",{"href":43,"rel":44},"https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/businessservices/articles/artificialintelligenceinukbusinesses/2023to2026",[45],"nofollow",[47],{"type":38,"value":48},"ONS, July 2026",{"type":38,"value":50},").",{"type":33,"tag":52,"props":53,"children":55},"h3",{"id":54},"from-expertise-to-sign-off",[56],{"type":38,"value":57},"From expertise to sign-off",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":59,"children":60},{},[61,63,70,72,79,81,88,90,97],{"type":38,"value":62},"A model has been trained on more of a profession's written knowledge than any practitioner could read in a career. It applies that knowledge in seconds, so even a professional whose judgement matches the model's is slower. The leading models, including Anthropic's ",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":64,"children":67},{"href":65,"rel":66},"https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview",[45],[68],{"type":38,"value":69},"Claude Opus 5.5",{"type":38,"value":71},", OpenAI's ",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":73,"children":76},{"href":74,"rel":75},"https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models",[45],[77],{"type":38,"value":78},"GPT-6 Astra",{"type":38,"value":80}," and Google's ",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":82,"children":85},{"href":83,"rel":84},"https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/models",[45],[86],{"type":38,"value":87},"Gemini 4 Argon",{"type":38,"value":89},", can work with a million tokens of context or more. That is enough to read a full set of contracts or a substantial codebase in a single pass. Meta advertises ten million tokens for its open-weight ",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":91,"children":94},{"href":92,"rel":93},"https://ai.meta.com/blog/llama-4-multimodal-intelligence/",[45],[95],{"type":38,"value":96},"Llama 4 Scout",{"type":38,"value":98},".",{"type":33,"tag":100,"props":101,"children":102},"ul",{},[103,132,142,167,177,196,214],{"type":33,"tag":104,"props":105,"children":106},"li",{},[107,113,115,122,124,131],{"type":33,"tag":108,"props":109,"children":110},"strong",{},[111],{"type":38,"value":112},"Law.",{"type":38,"value":114}," Contract review now takes minutes and costs cents. In a comparison with junior lawyers, language models reviewed contracts for under $0.25 each instead of $74, and matched or exceeded the lawyers' accuracy on the legal issues (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":116,"children":119},{"href":117,"rel":118},"https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.16212",[45],[120],{"type":38,"value":121},"Better Call GPT",{"type":38,"value":123},"). In May 2025, the Solicitors Regulation Authority authorised Garfield.Law, the first purely AI-based law firm in England and Wales. It stressed that using AI does not remove the solicitors' professional accountability (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":125,"children":128},{"href":126,"rel":127},"https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/press/garfield-ai-authorised/",[45],[129],{"type":38,"value":130},"SRA",{"type":38,"value":50},{"type":33,"tag":104,"props":133,"children":134},{},[135,140],{"type":33,"tag":108,"props":136,"children":137},{},[138],{"type":38,"value":139},"Tax and accounting.",{"type":38,"value":141}," Tax advice is worth less once a client can establish the position before the consultation. The rules an adviser applies, from double taxation treaties to the OECD guidelines, are written and published. In our own work, AI has resolved questions on both that would previously have needed a specialist.",{"type":33,"tag":104,"props":143,"children":144},{},[145,150,152,158,160,166],{"type":33,"tag":108,"props":146,"children":147},{},[148],{"type":38,"value":149},"Medicine.",{"type":38,"value":151}," AI diagnoses complex cases more accurately than generalist physicians. In a study published in ",{"type":33,"tag":153,"props":154,"children":155},"em",{},[156],{"type":38,"value":157},"Science",{"type":38,"value":159}," in October 2026, Microsoft's diagnostic system was correct in 83.2% of 304 complex cases. Generalist physicians working with reference material were correct in 36.1% (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":161,"children":164},{"href":162,"rel":163},"https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aeh7930",[45],[165],{"type":38,"value":157},{"type":38,"value":50},{"type":33,"tag":104,"props":168,"children":169},{},[170,175],{"type":33,"tag":108,"props":171,"children":172},{},[173],{"type":38,"value":174},"Pharmacy.",{"type":38,"value":176}," The pharmacist's role is becoming verification and responsibility. What a pharmacist checks, from interactions to doses adjusted for a patient's age, weight and kidney function, is set out in published references such as the British National Formulary. A model can now consider a patient's full medication list and history together.",{"type":33,"tag":104,"props":178,"children":179},{},[180,185,187,194],{"type":33,"tag":108,"props":181,"children":182},{},[183],{"type":38,"value":184},"Radiology.",{"type":38,"value":186}," AI increasingly reads the images first, and the radiologist reviews what it has found. In Sweden's MASAI trial of 105,915 women, AI-supported breast screening found 29% more cancers than standard reading by two radiologists, without a significant rise in false positives. It also cut the radiologists' screen-reading workload by 44% (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":188,"children":191},{"href":189,"rel":190},"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39904652/",[45],[192],{"type":38,"value":193},"The Lancet Digital Health",{"type":38,"value":195},"). The radiologist remains responsible for the result because patients and regulators do not yet trust AI to decide alone.",{"type":33,"tag":104,"props":197,"children":198},{},[199,204,206,213],{"type":33,"tag":108,"props":200,"children":201},{},[202],{"type":38,"value":203},"Software engineering.",{"type":38,"value":205}," In our experience, AI writes code better than most engineers. At Google, 75% of all new code is generated by AI and approved by engineers (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":207,"children":210},{"href":208,"rel":209},"https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/infrastructure-and-cloud/google-cloud/cloud-next-2026-sundar-pichai/",[45],[211],{"type":38,"value":212},"Google, April 2026",{"type":38,"value":50},{"type":33,"tag":104,"props":215,"children":216},{},[217,222,224,231],{"type":33,"tag":108,"props":218,"children":219},{},[220],{"type":38,"value":221},"Security.",{"type":38,"value":223}," The PHP2Shell vulnerabilities disclosed on 21 October 2026 are two critical flaws in the programming language used by most websites. They were found with the help of AI models (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":225,"children":228},{"href":226,"rel":227},"https://www.wiz.io/blog/php2shell-php-rce",[45],[229],{"type":38,"value":230},"Wiz Research",{"type":38,"value":232},"), which can test far more of a system than any team of engineers.",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":234,"children":235},{},[236],{"type":38,"value":237},"Clients will keep their advisers but pay for less of their time. The knowledge that made an employee hard to replace, let an adviser set the price and gave brokers and agents much of their role is no longer scarce.",{"type":33,"tag":239,"props":240,"children":241},"hr",{},[],{"type":33,"tag":52,"props":243,"children":245},{"id":244},"competition-without-barriers",[246],{"type":38,"value":247},"Competition without barriers",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":249,"children":250},{},[251],{"type":38,"value":252},"A company that spent a year developing a new product in private could once launch with a lead of a year or more. A competitor needed the knowledge to design it, the people to build it, the money to pay them and the time to do the work. Knowledge, as the professions above show, is now supplied by AI. The other three are far easier to obtain than they were.",{"type":33,"tag":100,"props":254,"children":255},{},[256,283,301],{"type":33,"tag":104,"props":257,"children":258},{},[259,264,266,273,275,282],{"type":33,"tag":108,"props":260,"children":261},{},[262],{"type":38,"value":263},"People.",{"type":38,"value":265}," In July 2022, at the height of the competition for engineers, US job postings for software developers were 96.4% above their pre-pandemic level. By June 2026 they were 27.5% below it (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":267,"children":270},{"href":268,"rel":269},"https://hiringlab.indeed.com/2026/07/08/ai-and-job-postings-from-destruction-to-creation/",[45],[271],{"type":38,"value":272},"Indeed Hiring Lab",{"type":38,"value":274},"). The fall began when interest rates rose, but a product no longer needs the team it once did. In June 2025, Wix agreed to pay $80 million for Base44, an app-building platform founded the previous year. Base44 had raised no outside money and hired its first six employees only the month before (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":276,"children":279},{"href":277,"rel":278},"https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-wix-acquires-israeli-vibe-coding-co-base44-1001513267",[45],[280],{"type":38,"value":281},"Globes",{"type":38,"value":50},{"type":33,"tag":104,"props":284,"children":285},{},[286,291,293,300],{"type":33,"tag":108,"props":287,"children":288},{},[289],{"type":38,"value":290},"Money.",{"type":38,"value":292}," In March 2025, the chief executive of Y Combinator said that some of its startups were generating as much as $10 million in revenue with fewer than ten people (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":294,"children":297},{"href":295,"rel":296},"https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/business/money-report/y-combinator-startups-are-fastest-growing-most-profitable-in-fund-history-because-of-ai/6188199/",[45],[298],{"type":38,"value":299},"CNBC",{"type":38,"value":50},{"type":33,"tag":104,"props":302,"children":303},{},[304,309,311,316],{"type":33,"tag":108,"props":305,"children":306},{},[307],{"type":38,"value":308},"Time.",{"type":38,"value":310}," At Google, a complex code migration carried out by agents and engineers together was completed six times faster than was possible a year earlier with engineers alone (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":312,"children":314},{"href":208,"rel":313},[45],[315],{"type":38,"value":212},{"type":38,"value":50},{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":318,"children":319},{},[320,322,329,331,338,340,347],{"type":38,"value":321},"Photoshop and AutoCAD kept their lead for decades because copying them took exactly these four things. While competitors spent years catching up, Adobe and Autodesk kept building on what they already had. GIMP, a free image editor, has been developed since its first release in 1996 (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":323,"children":326},{"href":324,"rel":325},"https://www.gimp.org/about/ancient_history.html",[45],[327],{"type":38,"value":328},"GIMP",{"type":38,"value":330},"). BricsCAD, which Bricsys has developed since 2002, works in AutoCAD's own DWG file format (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":332,"children":335},{"href":333,"rel":334},"https://www.digitalengineering247.com/article/hexagon-acquires-bricsys",[45],[336],{"type":38,"value":337},"Digital Engineering",{"type":38,"value":339},"), yet neither has caught up. Now that all four cost far less, many more teams can build a credible alternative, and we do not expect leads of that kind to last. Investors are already acting on this. By June 2026, Adobe's shares had fallen more than 37% that year, on concern about AI design tools that could disrupt the industry (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":341,"children":344},{"href":342,"rel":343},"https://whbl.com/2026/06/11/adobe-cfo-exit-fans-strategy-worries-despite-outlook-raise/",[45],[345],{"type":38,"value":346},"Reuters",{"type":38,"value":50},{"type":33,"tag":52,"props":349,"children":351},{"id":350},"why-ai-helps-the-copier-more-than-the-leader",[352],{"type":38,"value":353},"Why AI helps the copier more than the leader",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":355,"children":356},{},[357],{"type":38,"value":358},"The usual response is that an established business can use AI too and keep its lead. It can, but the lead it keeps is now short. A product takes a year of work to meet its customers' needs, and every feature after that takes research and decisions about what to build. A competitor copying the result skips all of that. The lead this work earns has already shrunk to a few months and is likely to shrink to weeks or days.",{"type":33,"tag":52,"props":360,"children":362},{"id":361},"what-makes-a-lead-last",[363],{"type":38,"value":364},"What makes a lead last",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":366,"children":367},{},[368,370,377],{"type":38,"value":369},"The Bloomberg Terminal is the clearest example of software backed by something competitors cannot obtain. LSEG, FactSet and others offer comparable terminals. What they cannot easily copy is the market data Bloomberg gathers through relationships built over decades. Nor can they copy the news and research produced by its own analysts and its more than 2,700 journalists in more than 100 bureaus (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":371,"children":374},{"href":372,"rel":373},"https://www.bloomberg.com/company/what-we-do/news-media/",[45],[375],{"type":38,"value":376},"Bloomberg",{"type":38,"value":378},"), or the messaging network its users rely on to reach one another. Much of that information is worth most at the moment it is published. A competitor that reproduces the software, with or without AI, still cannot offer it in time.",{"type":33,"tag":52,"props":380,"children":382},{"id":381},"what-this-means-for-strategy",[383],{"type":38,"value":384},"What this means for strategy",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":386,"children":387},{},[388],{"type":38,"value":389},"The leverage professionals and businesses hold today has already weakened, but it is still worth using. Until it is clear where this technology leads, they should assume it will weaken further. That means acquiring new leverage at all times: moving faster than before, changing direction as often as needed, and revisiting every few months the plans that once looked five or ten years ahead.",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":391,"children":392},{},[393,395,402],{"type":38,"value":394},"A professional now competes with AI itself and with others who use it. A business competes with rivals that use the same models it does. W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne call a market where every competitor fights over the same customers a red ocean. A market a business creates for itself, where competition is not yet relevant, they call a blue ocean (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":396,"children":399},{"href":397,"rel":398},"https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/what-is-blue-ocean-strategy/",[45],[400],{"type":38,"value":401},"Blue Ocean Strategy",{"type":38,"value":403},"). A profession or business that stops acquiring new leverage will find itself in a red ocean that AI is making more crowded than ever. That is why businesses need to plan for blue ones.",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":405,"children":406},{},[407],{"type":38,"value":408},"We expect every profession and business that has relied on knowledge to change, and the strongest positions to belong to those that reach new markets before their new competitors do.",{"title":410,"searchDepth":411,"depth":411,"links":412},"",2,[413,415,416,417,418],{"id":54,"depth":414,"text":57},3,{"id":244,"depth":414,"text":247},{"id":350,"depth":414,"text":353},{"id":361,"depth":414,"text":364},{"id":381,"depth":414,"text":384},"markdown","blog:insights:5.knowledge-is-no-longer-leverage.md","blog","insights/5.knowledge-is-no-longer-leverage.md","insights/5.knowledge-is-no-longer-leverage","md",{"_path":426,"_dir":6,"_draft":7,"_partial":7,"_locale":8,"title":427,"description":428,"published":429,"image":430,"author":433,"head":434,"tags":438,"body":440,"_type":419,"_id":559,"_source":421,"_file":560,"_stem":561,"_extension":424},"/insights/clickups-losing-strategy-trying-to-serve-everyone","ClickUp and the cost of serving everyone","ClickUp's breadth wins customers who want one product for everything, but it leaves each market open to a product built for that market alone.","26 Jan 2025",{"src":431,"width":432,"height":432,"imageLoaded":7},"/the-hidden-pitfalls-of-flexibility-why-trying-to-serve-everyone-can-hurt-your-product.webp",1024,{"name":13,"title":14,"src":15,"width":16,"height":16,"authorLoaded":7},{"image":435,"meta":436},"https://redlayers.com/the-hidden-pitfalls-of-flexibility-why-trying-to-serve-everyone-can-hurt-your-product.webp",[437],{"name":21,"content":13},[439],{"name":24,"bg":25,"text":26,"hoverBg":27,"hoverText":28},{"type":30,"children":441,"toc":552},[442,456,459,465,470,473,479,493,496,502,516,519,525,538,541,547],{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":443,"children":444},{},[445,447,454],{"type":38,"value":446},"ClickUp's decision to serve every kind of team in one product is the source of both its growth and its greatest risk, because each market it serves can eventually be won by a product built for that market alone. The company calls itself \"the everything app for work\" and promises \"one app to replace them all\", and the promise has worked: investors valued ClickUp at $4 billion in 2021 (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":448,"children":451},{"href":449,"rel":450},"https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/27/clickup-raises-400m-at-a-4b-valuation-to-expand-its-all-in-one-workplace-productivity-platform-to-europe",[45],[452],{"type":38,"value":453},"TechCrunch",{"type":38,"value":455},"). The value it offers is real, since one product means one subscription, one login and one place for a team's information, but that advantage lasts only as long as no better-suited product exists for the work a team does most.",{"type":33,"tag":239,"props":457,"children":458},{},[],{"type":33,"tag":52,"props":460,"children":462},{"id":461},"a-specialist-in-every-category",[463],{"type":38,"value":464},"A specialist in every category",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":466,"children":467},{},[468],{"type":38,"value":469},"ClickUp's documents compete with Notion and Confluence, its whiteboards with Miro, its chat with Slack, its screen recordings with Loom, its time tracking with Harvest and Toggl, and its sprint planning with Jira and Linear. Each of those products is designed around the habits of the people who use it all day, so a team for which one of these jobs matters most tends to choose the specialist, and ClickUp keeps the teams for which no single job matters enough to justify a separate tool.",{"type":33,"tag":239,"props":471,"children":472},{},[],{"type":33,"tag":52,"props":474,"children":476},{"id":475},"each-feature-adds-complexity-for-every-team",[477],{"type":38,"value":478},"Each feature adds complexity for every team",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":480,"children":481},{},[482,484,491],{"type":38,"value":483},"Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals, divides what a product does into what should be obvious, what should be easy and what only needs to be possible, and argues that \"obvious is all about always\": what people always do should be obvious, what they do frequently should be easy, and what they do only sometimes needs merely to be possible (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":485,"children":488},{"href":486,"rel":487},"https://world.hey.com/jason/the-obvious-the-easy-and-the-possible-2e11a3fb",[45],[489],{"type":38,"value":490},"Jason Fried",{"type":38,"value":492},"). The more a product does, the more of these decisions its designers have to make, and for ClickUp the decisions conflict, because what a software team does every day a marketing team does occasionally and a finance team may never do, so no single arrangement of the product can make the right things obvious for all of them.",{"type":33,"tag":239,"props":494,"children":495},{},[],{"type":33,"tag":52,"props":497,"children":499},{"id":498},"set-up-before-use",[500],{"type":38,"value":501},"Set-up before use",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":503,"children":504},{},[505,507,514],{"type":38,"value":506},"Because ClickUp is built for every workflow, each team has to decide on its spaces, folders and lists, its statuses, custom fields, views and automations before the product reflects how it works, and the work involved is substantial enough that ClickUp runs a partner programme of Verified Consultants and Solution Partners, many of whom sell implementation and onboarding as a service (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":508,"children":511},{"href":509,"rel":510},"https://clickup.com/partners",[45],[512],{"type":38,"value":513},"ClickUp",{"type":38,"value":515},"). A product built for a single market can be set up for that market's work from the start, so its value begins on the first day rather than once the set-up is complete.",{"type":33,"tag":239,"props":517,"children":518},{},[],{"type":33,"tag":52,"props":520,"children":522},{"id":521},"how-long-customers-will-stay",[523],{"type":38,"value":524},"How long customers will stay",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":526,"children":527},{},[528,530,537],{"type":38,"value":529},"Where ClickUp's customers accept its complexity, it is often because no product has yet been built for their particular work, and its flexibility lets them assemble something workable in the meantime. That loyalty is likely to last only until a product designed for their work arrives, and as the cost of building software falls, those products arrive sooner. ClickUp's competitors have already begun building for single markets: monday.com, one of the closest and itself built as a flexible platform for any kind of work, now sells separate products for sales teams and for product and development teams, and presented the launch of monday dev in 2023 as part of a strategy of multiple products (",{"type":33,"tag":41,"props":531,"children":534},{"href":532,"rel":533},"https://monday.com/p/press-release/monday-com-bolsters-its-work-os-product-suite-by-launching-monday-dev/",[45],[535],{"type":38,"value":536},"monday.com",{"type":38,"value":50},{"type":33,"tag":239,"props":539,"children":540},{},[],{"type":33,"tag":52,"props":542,"children":544},{"id":543},"the-implication",[545],{"type":38,"value":546},"The implication",{"type":33,"tag":34,"props":548,"children":549},{},[550],{"type":38,"value":551},"For any business commissioning or building software, the lesson is to define the market first, design for the way that market works and decline features that serve someone else, because focus is what allows a product to make the right things obvious and to be valuable from the first day to the people it is for.",{"title":410,"searchDepth":411,"depth":411,"links":553},[554,555,556,557,558],{"id":461,"depth":414,"text":464},{"id":475,"depth":414,"text":478},{"id":498,"depth":414,"text":501},{"id":521,"depth":414,"text":524},{"id":543,"depth":414,"text":546},"blog:insights:3.clickups-losing-strategy-trying-to-serve-everyone.md","insights/3.clickups-losing-strategy-trying-to-serve-everyone.md","insights/3.clickups-losing-strategy-trying-to-serve-everyone",1793774846276]