Ep. 536 | Agentic AI Is Not a Lego Brick: Rethinking Innovation

OnBase: Smashing Sales and Marketing Misalignments

Episode Summary

In this provocative and insightful episode, OnBase host Chris Moody reunites with Lukas Egger to discuss one of the most talked-about frontiers in business innovation: agentic AI. Lukas explores how companies can move beyond demos and hype to implement AI in ways that reshape business models and unlock new value creation.

Key Takeaways

• Prioritizing Agentic AI: Leaders must prioritize agentic AI for business preparedness due to the significant investment and potential for new value creation.
• Understanding Misconceptions: It's crucial to recognize the "Jagged Frontier of AI," where AI's capabilities are counterintuitive, and avoid the "Lego brick fallacy," which assumes AI can be simply plugged into existing processes.
• Lowering Cost of Failure: To confidently adopt AI, businesses must systematically lower the cost of failure, iterate quickly, and democratize the process.
• Data-Driven Insights: Robust data and real answers are essential for understanding the ROI and impact of AI changes on business processes, systems, and people.
• Competitive Advantage: Instead of focusing solely on common AI use cases, businesses should identify their unique, unfair advantages and engage in rapid iterations and customer conversations to discover differentiating functionalities.
• Integrated Innovation: Marketing, sales, and business development should be involved early in the AI innovation process to ensure that new solutions align with market needs and monetization strategies.
• Beyond Peacocking: Avoid simply "peacocking" with AI by replicating what others are doing; instead, focus on deep integration and solving real business problems.

Best Moments

• 02:00 – Lukas describes his nonlinear path from philosophy and startups to enterprise innovation at SAP.
• 05:00 – The promise of agentic AI: opening up new domains for value creation and strategic repositioning.
• 10:00 – Breaking down misconceptions: why traditional planning fails in the face of fast-moving AI.
• 15:00 – Lowering the cost of failure and why “small wins” are key to long-term adoption.
• 20:00 – Avoiding AI homogeneity: how to resist the urge to copy competitors and build a real moat.
• 26:00 – Implementing AI at scale in large organizations: the hidden value of domain expertise and transparency.
• 32:00 – The behaviors leaders must change to avoid missing the AI wave entirely.
• 38:00 – Why marketers and sales teams must embed in AI development—early and often.

Shout-outs

• Helen and Dave Edwards, Co-Founders of Artificiality Institute who discuss the emotional components of AI technology.

• Peter Temes, Founder and President, ILO Institute, for his deep understanding of basic

About the Guest

Lukas N.P. Egger leads the Innovation Office & Strategic Projects team at SAP Signavio, where he focuses on de-risking new product ideas and establishing best-in-class product discovery practices. With a successful track record in team building and managing challenging projects, Lukas has expertise in data-driven technology, cloud-native development, and has created and implemented a new product discovery methodology. Excelling at bridging the gap between technical and business teams, he has worked in AI, operations, and product management in fast-growth environments. As a founder, he has experience building lean and iterating quickly to create saleable software with limited resources while fostering loyalty. Lukas has movie credits for his work in Computer Graphics research, published a book on philosophy, and is passionate about the intersection of technology and people, regularly speaking on how to improve organizations.

Connect with Lukas.