Your Bookstore Doesn't Need a Website

Why AI literacy is the only strategy question that matters

The first wave of internet adoption was full of doomed companies. They saw this new technology called "the web" and did what seemed obvious: they built websites.

Local bookstores got websites. Music stores got websites. Video rental shops got websites.

Then they watched as Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify didn't just beat them. They erased entire industries from existence.

Here's what Christian Guttman told me that every European CEO needs to hear:

We're making the exact same mistake with AI.

The Literacy Problem

Christian has been building AI systems since he was 13. He's been a CEO, sits on boards, invests in quantum computing. And when I asked him what's holding European companies back, his answer wasn't about capital or regulation.

"You cannot have a strategic discussion about how AI impacts your business unless you have a fundamental understanding of AI."

Not expert-level knowledge. Not a PhD. Just enough literacy to see what's actually possible.

Most C-suites don't have it. And that gap (between what AI can do and what you can imagine it doing) is why you're stuck slapping chatbots onto customer service instead of reimagining your entire business model.

Here's the pattern Christian sees constantly: CEOs who spent 20 years building deep domain expertise are now supposed to evaluate proposals about multi-agent systems and agentic workflows from their brand new Chief AI Officer. The AI expert is talking about possibilities the CEO literally cannot conceive of because they lack the mental models.

So what happens? They default to what they can understand: Making existing processes 10% more efficient.

That's not transformation. That's your bookstore getting a website.

The Amazon Lesson

Amazon didn't win because they sold books on the internet instead of in stores. They won because Jeff Bezos understood the technology deeply enough to reimagine everything.

Not just the front-end (website instead of storefront). The entire model: Supply chains. Inventory management. Customer data. Recommendation systems. Third-party marketplaces. Infrastructure that became AWS.

The music execs in 2001 were thinking about webpages. They didn't see that physical distribution was about to become obsolete. That ownership was about to become access. That the entire value chain was about to invert.

You're probably in the same predicament. Not because you're less smart. Because you haven't invested time in understanding the technology deeply enough to imagine what it makes possible.

And that's the trap. That uncertainty doesn't lead to bold transformation. It leads to pilot programs that never scale, small efficiency gains, automation at the edges - all the things that look good in quarterly reviews while your business model becomes obsolete.

The Convergence You're Missing

But here's what makes this moment even more dangerous than the internet revolution: You're not navigating one technological shift. You're navigating at least five simultaneous ones, and they're converging.

AI. Quantum computing. Robotics. Biotech. New energy systems.

Even if you're one of the leaders finally taking AI seriously, chances are you're missing the wider point of our technological timeline for the coming 5-10 years.

Christian's timeline for multipurpose household robots? Three to five years. Quantum computing becoming competitively necessary? Five years maximum. Personalized medicine using AI agents analyzing your biomarkers against every published paper? He's already built it for himself.

These aren't five separate transformations happening in sequence. They're converging. AI models running on quantum processors. Humanoid robots using multi-agent decision systems. Drug discovery combining AI simulation with quantum-level molecular modeling.

Think for a second what that means. What fundamentally changes in a society when intelligence becomes abundant, manual labor is handled by machines, energy constraints disappear, and life expectancy increases faster than you age?

Lovely future. Also completely different from anything we've built our businesses around.

And your approach to change right now tells me a lot about how you'll thrive in that future. There will be winners and losers.

Two Paths Forward

We can go two ways here.

Path one: Follow the path of least resistance. Slap AI onto your legacy processes. Fight to maintain status quo. Optimize for the quarterly report. You'll see a 20% productivity boost, the market will price that in over two years, and you'll be back to scratch. Except now you're feeding license dollars to OpenAI while they build the future. Capitalists win. You survive.

Path two: Make the harder choice. The one this year's Nobel Prize winners in economics would recognize as creative destruction - deliberately dismantling what works to make space for what could work better. Stop optimizing for incremental gains and start optimizing for a future where humans thrive alongside these technologies. Create things that weren't possible before. Build capabilities your competitors can't imagine yet. Augment humanity instead of automating it away.

Yes, path two will be unpopular in the short term. Your CFO won't see the proof this quarter. Your board will ask uncomfortable questions. But it's worth it. Because we all have a say in the future we create.

And it starts with you taking the time to understand what AI actually makes possible - and what that fundamentally means for how you create value.

What This Actually Means

So just as bookstores doesn't need a websites, you need to understand that your equivalent of "bookstore" must be reimagined from first principles.

You're at that same inflection point now. Except this time it's not just retail that's being reimagined. It's everything.

AI isn't about making your current business 10% more efficient. It's about reimagining what your business fundamentally is and does.

So ask yourself: What value could you create for customers that wasn't possible two years ago? What problems could you solve that you've always assumed were impossible? What would your business look like if you designed it from scratch today with no legacy constraints?

If you can't answer those questions, the problem isn't your AI team. It's that you don't understand the technology well enough to see what's actually possible.

The companies that win the next decade won't be the ones with the best AI team. They'll be the ones whose leadership understands AI well enough to imagine what nobody else can see yet - and bold enough to build toward that vision while the metrics still look uncertain.

That's what Amazon understood before they became Amazon. That's what you need to understand now.

This article was inspired by a podcast with Christian Guttman, and the whole conversation can be viewed here: