When the Business Value Collective gathered for our latest Jam Session (Q3 2025), the title alone sparked curiosity: “AI Killed the Value Superstar?” A playful nod to the Buggles’ famous song played non-stop at the official launch of MTV, but with a serious undertone.
Was AI about to make value professionals obsolete, or like the era of the music video, would it create an opportunity for a new kind of superstar to emerge?
What followed was an honest, collaborative exploration of what AI means for our work as value leaders, consultants, and engineers.
The Uneasy Question Hanging Over Us
The conversation began with what many in the community are already feeling: hiring freezes, role cuts, and uncertainty. Open positions for business value consultants and engineers are scarce, and even when they appear, the process is slow and uncertain. Boards and CEOs are pressing leaders to ask: Can AI do the job instead of adding headcount?
This pressure comes at a time when business models themselves are shifting. Subscription gave way to usage-based models, and now usage is giving way to outcome-based pricing—where customers expect to pay for actual value delivered. The irony is clear: just when value is more critical than ever, the people who specialize in it are under the most pressure.
How AI Is Already Rewriting the Playbook
The session turned quickly to real-world examples. AI is no longer an abstract trend; it’s embedded in how many teams already work:
- Briefing documents in minutes. What once required offshore research teams or hours of manual work can now be produced almost instantly.
- Business cases on autopilot. AI tools can fill in details, draft storytelling, and generate customer-facing content with little more than a few prompts.
- Virtual value assistants. Some teams are experimenting with bots that act like a junior value engineer, answering questions and spitting out draft materials.
And yet, the group was quick to point out the pitfalls: AI is “confident but often wrong.” Many had experienced beautiful-looking outputs backed by sources that didn’t exist or metrics attributed to the wrong firm. Governance challenges also loomed large—enterprises demanding AI stay within their own deployment, compliance rules restricting what can be used, and a lack of consistency in outputs.
Even when the tools worked, adoption was low. One striking example: Copilot is embedded in many workplaces, but actual usage hovers around 3%. The problem isn’t just the tool; it’s integration, awareness of “killer use cases,” and the human habits needed to change.
From Player to Orchestrator: A New Evolution
If AI is automating the grunt work, what does that mean for us? This was the heart of the discussion.
We explored the idea of a progression:
- Player: The traditional role—building individual business cases for major deals.
- Composer: Creating frameworks, playbooks, and repeatable models to scale value.
- Orchestrator: The next horizon—guiding AI, integrating tools, and embedding value into every touchpoint across the customer journey.
This Orchestrator role isn’t about competing with AI—it’s about leveraging it. Instead of manually creating every document, value leaders can design the systems, prompts, and governance that ensure AI delivers credible, consistent, and impactful value messaging across sales, marketing, and customer success.
It’s not the end of the value superstar. It’s the birth of a new one.
Why the Human Touch Still Matters
Amid all the excitement and experimentation, one point kept surfacing: trust can’t be automated.
A value case generated by AI may look polished, but it can’t replicate the experience of co-creating a shared value plan with a customer, listening actively, and building trust in the process. AI can summarize call notes or draft slides, but the real differentiation comes when a value expert brings judgment, context, and humanity to the table.
In fact, this might become our strongest differentiator in an AI-driven world: we’re not just bots producing content; we’re trusted partners who guide, vet, and humanize the process of value realization.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The Jam Session didn’t end with fear—it ended with energy. Together, we mapped out what it takes to thrive in this new landscape:
- Experiment and learn. Play with AI in your workflows now—don’t wait.
- Double down on quality. Vet everything. Trust is too valuable to risk.
- Embrace orchestration. Focus less on execution, more on designing and integrating.
- Set guardrails. Build governance around compliance, branding, and data use.
- Elevate the practice. Use AI not just to save time, but to embed value everywhere—from discovery questions to customer success reviews.
The Bottom-Line
By the end of the session, the metaphor had shifted. AI isn’t “killing” the value superstar—it’s forcing an evolution. Those willing to move beyond being players and embrace the role of orchestrators will find themselves more valuable than ever.
The Business Value Collective left with a sense of momentum. Yes, the landscape is changing fast. But with change comes opportunity—and as a community, we’ll continue exploring, experimenting, and sharing so that value doesn’t just survive in the age of AI… it thrives.
Lets discuss how you can leverage AI for your value program: click here to schedule a consult with us.