Jed Griffiths, Chief Digital Officer, Microsoft UK, reveals what makes Frontier organisations different from their competitors in their approach to AI transformation.
I spend my weeks with boards and executive teams across the UK, and I’ve noticed a clear shift. Many have tried Microsoft Copilot. The leaders pulling ahead are asking a bigger question: How should our organisation run differently because of AI?
That shift, from adding AI to existing work to redesigning how the entire organisation operates, is where real value starts to appear. Microsoft’s Work Trend Index calls organisations making this move Frontier Firms: organisations built around on-demand intelligence, human-and-agent teams, and work organised around outcomes rather than hierarchies.
Becoming a Frontier Firm isn’t something you buy. It’s something you decide, design, and build.
Leadership challenge
The organisations getting the most from AI are not just automating individual tasks, they’re rethinking work itself.
For example, Pets at Home has used agents built in Copilot Studio to reshape how its operations teams spot and act on risk, freeing skilled people to focus on the judgement work agents cannot do. Food retailer Iceland built Genie, not as a chatbot bolted onto the side, but as an operational layer its teams genuinely rely on. And Recordsure is rewriting the economics of compliance review in financial services, rebuilding a slow, people-heavy process around AI assurance so experts can focus where they add the greatest value.
These are not simply productivity stories. They are examples of leaders deciding how work should change and backing that decision.
When leadership teams ask me how to move from promising pilots to meaningful transformation, I use a simple framework:
Strategy. Platform. Culture.
All three need to work together.
Strategy: decide what you want to change
Do you want to streamline the work you already do, or reimagine what the work could become? Both are valuable, but the most ambitious leaders are increasingly choosing the second.
Strategy means identifying where reinvention will have the greatest impact. A Frontier strategy is not ‘AI everywhere’, it is ‘AI where it delivers the most economic value’.
The strategies that succeed are rooted in what makes an organisation distinctive. They are not strategies a competitor could have written for you.
Platform: build for two speeds at once
Every successful transformation runs in two lanes at once: the Fast Lane and the Deep Lane.
The Fast Lane captures value now. It’s about building AI fluency with Copilot in the flow of work, using low-code agents built by the people closest to the problem. These visible wins build confidence and help fund bigger ambitions.
The Deep Lane is the heart of the transformational work. It means re-engineering core processes around your IP [intellectual property], strengthening data foundations and building secure workflows on a platform that helps you scale beyond simple pilots. This is the work that differentiates organisations as ‘Frontier’ and keeps them there.
The strongest leaders run both lanes deliberately, using quick wins to create momentum while investing in the deeper changes required for long-term advantage. Microsoft’s technology portfolio is built to support both: Copilot and Cowork for speed, Azure Foundry for depth, both on a platform that provides governance and scale.
Culture: where the advantage compounds
This is where lasting advantage is created. Technology is increasingly accessible; the differentiator is how organisations help people adapt and thrive.
Frontier work changes what people do at their best. Analysts become orchestrators of digital labour, combining AI capabilities with human judgement. Managers shift from measuring hours to measuring outcomes.
The organisations that succeed do more than introduce new tools. They redesign roles, give people permission to reinvest time into higher-value work, and lead visibly from the front. Culture follows what leaders do.
Give people a clear picture of what they can become next, and they will help drive the change themselves.
Five moves that set leaders apart
1. Lead with the operating model, not the model. Decide how the business should run differently first. Technology choices become much clearer afterwards.
2. Run both lanes deliberately. Use Fast Lane wins to build the AI ‘muscle’ and accelerate Deep Lane transformation.
3. Make governance an accelerator. Quality data, trust, and clear guardrails enable organisations to move quickly with confidence.
4. Measure real value, not pilots. Focus on business impact and processes transformed, not simply experiments completed.
5. Own the culture change. When leaders work differently, the rest of the organisation follows.
The opportunity
The Frontier is closer than many leaders think. It starts with clear choices about how work should change, the platform needed to support it, and how people’s roles evolve. Get those choices right and AI stops being something you have bought and becomes something built into how your organisation runs.
The Frontier is not a destination. It’s a decision. And for organisations willing to make it, the opportunity is already here.