Never Waste a Crisis

Data and publishing stocks under pressure over AI threat

Threat of New AI Tools Wipes $300 Billion Off Software and Data Stocks - WSJ

For business leaders, it can feel like you wake up each morning asking: what crisis will it be today? We operate in a world of compounding shocks, geopolitical, regulatory, social, security, climate and technological, arriving faster and with greater impact. It is volatile, fragile, and unforgiving. It is also, paradoxically, full of opportunity.

Why a crisis matters

When a crisis hits, how you respond as a leader becomes the real test.

The first lesson I write about in my book Bluebook is simple: don’t waste a crisis. A crisis concentrates attention and creates urgency in a way that business-as-usual never can. It gives leaders licence and obligation to act more radically, more decisively, and more quickly than would otherwise be possible.

What this week’s AI shock reveals 

This week provided a clear example. Following the launch of Claude Cowork by Anthropic, share prices across parts of the media, data and professional services sectors fell sharply in some cases by double digits. According to the New York Times, $300B were wiped off market capitalisations on fear that new AI tools could compete directly with incumbent business models.

Was this an overreaction? Almost certainly. But was it something to dismiss? Absolutely not.

We have seen this pattern before. During the dot-com boom, exuberance far outpaced reality Pets.com was never going to take over the world, as its collapse in 2000 demonstrated. Yet while early hype was misplaced, the deeper shift was real. Internet technologies steadily dismantled companies that failed to adapt and created entirely new business models that, 25 years on, dominate global markets: e-commerce, social media and cloud computing.

The lesson is not to fear disruption it is to recognise it early and act decisively.

Three strategic responses for leaders

So what is the right response when your share price falls 15% on the back of an AI-driven narrative?

First: act boldly This is the moment to accept that the environment, and the assumptions underpinning your strategy, has fundamentally changed. Incremental pilots and AI “sandboxes” have been useful learning tools, but they are rarely sufficient when entire markets are being reshaped.

Leaders should be asking uncomfortable questions: is now the time to raise capital, materially upgrade talent and capabilities, or pursue acquisitions that accelerate transformation? Crises create the window in which bold moves become possible and defensible.

Second: disrupt yourself Some parts of your business will be disrupted. Pretending otherwise is not a strategy. The real risk is allowing someone else to do the disrupting for you.

Defending short-term revenue or rigidly adhering to a three-year plan is not a justification for sacrificing long-term relevance. If you are not actively building AI-enabled products that compete with, or cannibalise, parts of your existing business, you should question whether your transformation efforts are sufficiently ambitious.

There is growing evidence that many AI investments are failing to generate returns. Often this is not because they go too far, but because they do not go far enough.

Third: own the data advantage AI runs on data, historical, real-time and future. Leaders must be clear-eyed about where their advantage lies. Will you own proprietary data and models, partner to access them, or buy capability outright?

Disruption will be most acute where high-value data is widely available. Protecting, governing and activating proprietary datasets and anticipating which future datasets will matter most will be decisive in determining who emerges stronger from this cycle.

The leadership moment This is not the first “AI crisis”. Techniques now grouped under AI such as machine learning have existed for decades. What is different is the pace and visibility of tools such as generative and agentic AI, which now directly challenge the software, SaaS, media and data businesses that underpin modern professional services.

Markets have reacted perhaps excessively but the underlying question is real. Future case studies will not focus on who predicted AI perfectly, but on which leaders acted with ambition when uncertainty was highest.

Many of the companies suffering share price losses are already reacting with their own AI investments. Those who use this moment to move decisively will be on the right side of history.

You can read more about leadership during transformation in Bluebook, which tells the story of the creation of the transformation and carve out of Refinitiv with Blackstone Partners