What are the three routes of AI?
The three routes are the ways AI creates value in an organisation: AI tools for people, AI agents for processes and AI for innovation. Each route has its own business case, its own owner and its own pace.
Explanation
Route 1 is about adoption. Copilots and assistants make employees faster in their daily work. The gain lies in skills and habits, and the owner is usually HR or an AI programme.
Route 2 is about processes. The question is: where do you need people today only to keep operations running? That is where agents take over repeatable work, from intake to resolution. The owner is the process owner, and the business case is concrete: lead time, quality and capacity.
Route 3 is about innovation: what was impossible before and is possible now? New services, new business models and products that were too expensive without AI. This is work for the executive team and the innovation team.
Organisations that mix up the routes measure adoption against process targets or judge an innovation on time saved. Keeping them apart lets you pick the right ambition, budget and owner for each route.
What it looks like in practice
At an energy company, everyone gets an AI assistant in route 1. In route 2, an agent sorts outage reports and resolves the simple ones itself. In route 3, the company develops a new service for fleet managers that gives real-time charging advice.
