Select managers are now using artificial intelligence to enhance organizational learning. These astute managers use AI not only to enhance organizations’ ability to learn but also to transform how their organizations operate, making them better—better at integrating AI, better at navigating future technological advancements, and better at managing uncertainty.

AI gives organizations insight into the market and enables them, with more confidence, to swiftly convert it into action, which simultaneously makes the ability to learn quickly more critical to sustaining a competitive edge. To maintain this edge amidst the accelerating tech advances in each new generation of AI models, organizations must also cultivate the agility to integrate these technologies into their operations. In an era marked by technological disruption, regulatory flux, and talent scarcity, those who master learning with AI will have a competitive edge.

Organizational learning is an organization’s capability to change its knowledge through experience. New AI tools, both predictive AI and generative AI (GenAI), can improve organizations by changing the way companies understand, plan for, and react to the ever-increasing speed of change in the market. AI (both generative and predictive) combined with robust organizational learning processes makes organizations better able to benefit from new technologies and more resilient to shocks. In this way, AI-powered organizational learning enhances management’s ability to contend with uncertainty.

What does combining AI and organizational learning look like in the real world? Global cosmetics brand the Estée Lauder Companies (ELC), for example, began deploying predictive AI-powered social media “listening” to better understand and anticipate emerging consumer trends. Previously, trends shifted seasonally, but the social media era shortened the trend life cycle, creating uncertainty for the company. Using AI to identify consumers’ emerging preferences, ELC matches those trends with products already in the company’s supply chain, which it then repackages and redeploys to match real-time consumer demand.

ELC clearly accelerated its market intelligence, but when it synthesized that information as part of its organizational learning process, the company identified emerging compliance uncertainty in its flexible approach; it sees potential for GenAI to support the automation of regulatory requirement checks. For organizations like ELC, integrating AI into their learning systems increases their ability to deploy new technology, setting off a virtuous cycle that further accelerates their organizational learning.