December 3, 2025
In the digital world,
leveraging AI to increase business valuation is the new strategic imperative
How can AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI release trapped value in your company that can lead to higher business value creation?
Over the last three years, companies of all sizes and across all industries have invested billions of dollars in AI, Gen AI, and Agentic AI with little or no ROI and modest (if any) positive impact on creating increased business valuation.
- A recent MIT report states that 95% of AI pilots fail to provide a return on investment largely due to poor integration with legacy systems, existing workflows, and a lack of workforce skills.
At the heart of this lack of performance is “institutional inertia,” as most companies are trying to fit AI into preexisting systems & workflows as if it’s just another bolt-on technology rather than reimagining their operating and business model holistically. As one CEO said, “incrementalism is a hard trap to get out of.”
Three other data points amplify the current challenges:
- Deloitte’s TrustID report showed that in the third quarter of 2025 despite increased access to GenAI in the workplace overall usage decreased by 15%.
- Shadow AI increased as a problem with 43% of workers with access to GenAI admitting to non-compliance with governance standards and guardrails.
- Employee trust in GenAI declined 38% between May & July of 2025, in most cases related to little or no employee training on the new technology.
The recurring theme throughout these lack luster results is that companies have approached AI as a tactical/transactional tool not a strategic/transformational asset. They kept asking what can AI do rather than how can AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI release trapped value across the company to drive higher business valuation?
The Trapped Value Playbook: Maximizing business value creation and ROI from your digital technology investments
The Trapped Value Playbook is a proven framework that helps senior leadership teams uncover inefficiencies, optimize resources, and shift budgets from low-value run-the-business operations to high-growth business value creation initiatives. In just 30-60 days, we help businesses recover trapped value from legacy systems and processes to be redeployed against digital technology investments like GenAI & Agentic AI that drive measurable business growth outcomes.
Through strategic discovery, facilitated workshops, and hands-on implementation, this playbook consistently delivers 10x to 25x ROI over its costs and turns underperforming AI projects into scalable, revenue-generating initiatives.
The Trapped Value Playbook delivers measurable Outcomes & Strategic Wins:
- Business Alignment: Directly support strategic business growth goals
- Immediate Value Capture: Free up existing budget and resources within 30-60 days
- AI Redeployment Implementation: Project plans with timelines and expected ROI
- Resource Reallocation: Shift existing resources from low-value run-the-business functions to high-impact, scalable grow-the-business initiatives
- Strategic AI Roadmap: Prioritized initiatives for the next 6-12 months
The Trapped Value Playbook is based on a three-phase framework designed to deliver both short-term results and long-term business value growth:
Phase 1: Discovery – Document Current Budget & Resource Allocation
Objective: Segment the percentage of the current budget and resources allocated to running the business vs. growing the business (norm is 80% run – 20% grow).
Activities:
- Stakeholder Interviews: Review current budget and resource allocation by business line and support functions. Document run vs. grow percentages.
- Technology Systems & Process Review: Identify legacy systems & processes.
Key Output: A detailed report making the business case to move forward.
Phase 2: Delivery – Unlocking & Redeploying Trapped Value Facilitated Workshops
Part 1: Unlocking Trapped Value Workshop
Objective: Identify and recover existing budgets and resources from run-the-business legacy systems and processes, prioritizing 3-5 immediate recovery projects for execution within 30-60 days.
Workshop Focus:
- Pinpoint specific opportunities to modernize, consolidate, or eliminate legacy systems, processes & workflows.
- Prioritize specific recovery projects to be implemented within 30-60 days.
Key Output: Clear, accountable trapped value recovery projects, each with an assigned owner for execution who is committed to developing and executing an implementation plan.
Part 2: Reinvesting for ROI Driven Growth
Objective: Reinvest recovered existing resources and budget into AI initiatives that deliver high returns and align with business growth goals.
Workshop Focus:
- Prioritize High-Impact Business Value Creation Initiatives: Predictive analytics, personalization, operational efficiencies.
- Develop a Budget & Resource Redeployment Plan: Clear milestones, deliverables, and accountability.
- Establish Cross Functional Teams: Ensure all initiatives are aligned with business goals, not just stand-alone experiments.
- Streamline Decision-Making: Breakdown silos to drive faster adoption & utilization.
Key Outputs: A custom Trapped Value Redeployment Map, including:
- Quick wins in 30-60 days, short-term projects with defined metrics for success
- Intermediate & long-term projects with expected ROI
Phase 3: Implementation – Executing the Roadmap
The implementation phase develops a 12-24 month digital technology strategic roadmap and timetable with key deliverables and desired outcomes to include:
- Prioritized projects are assigned to cross-functional teams who develop detailed execution plans with measurable ROI and business valuation creation metrics.
A strategic framework to maximize the business value and ROI from AI, GenAI & Agentic AI
The reason so many AI projects have missed their desired outcomes is because they weren’t in service to solving a specific problem and taking advantage of a specific opportunity. They were mostly about deploying a new technology before anyone really understood what it can do and what kind of organizational and operational preparation you have to have in place to do it.
In my early AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI work with clients, we’ve used the 4 Zones Model framework above to identify multiple business value creation needs and opportunities across different operating and functional units. In each case, we identified a specific business value creation priority and then rigorously explored how successfully adopting AI could enable or enhance its outcome. As part of that work, we directly tied employee needs, priorities, and benefits into the agreed upon implementation program. Here is an initial breakdown of these examples by zone:
Productivity Zone Business Value Creation:
- Employee Productivity
- Reduce time on low value work
- Increase time on high value work
- Automate Routine Tasks
- Call center interactions
- Supply chain optimization
- Cybersecurity
- Faster breach detection
- Better vulnerability monitoring
Performance Zone Business Value Creation
- Personalized Customer Experiences
- Individualized customer offers
- Efficient order fulfillment
- Increased Data Utilization
- Real time insights
- Predictive analytics
- Accurate Lead Generation
- Better demand forecasting
- Better product fit analysis
Incubation Zone Business Value Creation
- Automated Product Development & Testing
- Fail fast learn fast
- Increased time to value
- Customized Written, Audio & Visual Content
- Better content customer match
- Higher product & service differentiation
- Performing Probabilistic Thinking
- Comparative software solution analysis
- Scenario planning tool
Transformation Zone Business Value Creation
- M&A Analysis
- Faster and more accurate due diligience
- Better culture fit analysis
- New Business Assessment
- Operating model compatibility
- Organizational compatibility
- Digital Transformation Evaluation
- Zone offense differentiation potential
- Zone defense neutralization potential
The good news is that the work I’ve done with early adopter CIOs and their senior leadership teams utilizing this approach has resulted in them being able to be fully prepared to successfully adopt and utilize AI, GenAI & Agentic AI.
If this is a journey you want to undertake, I’d welcome the opportunity to discuss how we can put this approach to work for you and your leadership team.
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