Have you been concerned about jobs being eliminated because of artificial intelligence (AI)? My exhortation is that, now more than ever, if you want to protect your position in the market, your company and your role, you must become more innovative and entrepreneurial with and through AI.
To lead, not just survive but thrive, you must become an AI-driven entrepreneurial polymath.
Some entrepreneurs dedicate their lives to building and scaling a single enterprise, but the most impactful among them — entrepreneurial polymaths (or serial entrepreneurs) — never stop creating. They build multiple ventures, innovate across disciplines and contribute to both industry and society.
Polymath comes from the Greek “polymathēs” — “having learned much.” Historically, polymaths like Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin applied mastery across multiple fields. In an entrepreneurial context, a polymath entrepreneur blends adaptability and insatiable curiosity with the commercial instincts to turn knowledge and innovation into enterprises.
Where the typical entrepreneur may invest all energy into one idea, the polymath entrepreneur has a restless drive to solve problems repeatedly. With AI, this isn’t just easier; it has become essential for survival.
The question for you is: Are you a maintainer, a one-venture wonder, or do you have the capacity for ongoing leadership and innovation across multiple pursuits?
Leverage for Leaders
Over my career I have interacted with thousands of CEOs, hundreds of whom have been clients and many who have become friends. The most fascinating and fruitful among them have always been the polymath entrepreneurs.
Whether they wear the title of CEO, founder or simply manager, they are the true engines of progress. They see opportunities others overlook, and in an age of technological disruption and AI, they often find it easy to reinvent industries.
But vision and creativity alone are not enough. As Peter Drucker reminds us, “Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.”
Entrepreneurs often have blind spots in the disciplines of management, strategy, innovation management, implementation, culture, resource allocation, productivity and sustainable value creation. Without these, even a polymath’s brilliance can stall.
One shortcut is leverage: Partner with external strategists who’ve implemented AI-driven innovations across many businesses, so you’re not learning everything the expensive way, through delays, misfires and internal politics.
When partnered with strong functional leadership, however, the polymath entrepreneur becomes nearly unstoppable. Their power multiplies when aligned with:
- Operations leadership (chief operating officer/VP of operations) to translate vision into scalable systems.
- Financial leadership (chief financial officer) to ensure disciplined capital allocation and risk management.
- Specialized expertise (e.g., internal full-time or external consulting or fractional chief marketing officer, chief information officer or chief strategy officer) to deepen customer, technology or domain execution.
As Michael Porter taught: “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” The polymath thrives because they can choose across domains, letting go of the old to seize the new. And as Joseph Schumpeter argued in “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy,” the entrepreneur is the true agent of “creative destruction.” The polymath entrepreneur embodies this, not just once, but repeatedly, breaking down old models and building new ones.
Unlike the myth that entrepreneurship is a product of personality or charisma, whether Steve Jobs at Apple, Richard Branson at Virgin or Elon Musk with his many ventures, Drucker insisted that entrepreneurship is a discipline. It can be studied, replicated and managed. What separates polymath entrepreneurs is their repeated ability to master this discipline across domains.
Bottom line: The most successful will be those who will be applying the fast-evolving tools of AI to not just innovate and add new value through the optimization of your organization but also to create new solutions for your customer/market that innovate your industry — and often will create a new sustainable business faster and more value-creating than ever before.
Mark Faust (513-621-8000, mark@em1990.com) works with owners, CEOs and sales managers who want to grow their businesses. You can schedule a free profit improvement session with Mark by visiting calendly.com/markfaust. Read more ideas from him here.
