For more than twenty-five years, I’ve watched technology cycles move from the “magic” phase to the “utility” phase. I remember the early days at Nokia when we thought the mobile phone was just a portable telephone, only to realise it was actually the first iteration of a remote control for life. I saw a similar shift at easyJet, where we transformed from a travel company with a website into a digital-first commerce giant.
Today, we find ourselves at another such pivot point. The era of “Generative AI” as a fancy writing assistant is ending. We are entering the Agentic Era. But as with every previous cycle—the .com boom, the social media gold rush, and the mobile revolution—there is a massive gap between the hype of the “answer engine” and the reality of a product that creates sustainable value. If we aren’t careful, we aren’t just building agents; we are automating the next wave of enshittification.
The Death of the Search Referral
According to the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report, publishers are bracing for a massive 40% decline in search engine referrals over the next three years. Why? Because search engines are becoming “Answer Engines.”
When ChatGPT or Google Gemini provides a full summary of an article, the user has no reason to click through. For a Product Leader, this is a existential crisis. If your business model relies on “top of funnel” traffic from search, the floor is currently being pulled out from under you. We are seeing a shift where the “middleman” (the aggregator) is now consuming the value of the “producer” (the content creator) without the traditional exchange of traffic.
Beyond the Chatbox: The Rise of the Agentic Product Model
The solution isn’t to fight the agents; it’s to build them. But we must move beyond the “chat” interface. As highlighted by IBM’s 2026 forecast, this is the year when multi-agent systems move into production. These aren’t just bots that talk; they are agents that do.
Think about the difference between a bot that tells you about flight prices and an agent that has the autonomy to book the flight, negotiate a refund when it’s delayed, and rebook you on a rival carrier based on your personal preferences. This requires a fundamental shift in our Product Ways of Working. You cannot build autonomous agents with siloed, project-based teams. You need empowered, cross-functional squads where engineers, designers, and product managers are thinking about outcomes, not just features.
- Outcome: A successful trip.
- Feature: A search results page.
The latter is dead. The former is where the value lies.
The Danger of “AI Slop” and the Rot Economy
There is a darker side to this transformation. As the cost of generating content and code drops to near zero, we are seeing the rise of what many call “AI Slop.” This is the Rot Economy in action—filling the internet with low-quality, synthetically generated noise just to capture a few more seconds of attention.
We’ve seen this before. In the mid-2010s, “Enshittification” (a term coined by Cory Doctorow) described how platforms eventually turn on their users to squeeze out more profit for shareholders. If our AI agents are designed solely to maximise “engagement” or “conversion” through manipulation, they will follow the same path. We risk building a digital ecosystem where agents talk to other agents, and the human user is left in a hall of mirrors.
Distinctiveness is the Only Moat
So, how do we lead through this? The answer lies in distinctiveness. If a machine can replicate what you do, you have no moat. The International Federation of Journalists recently noted that news organisations are pivoting toward “AI-resistant reporting”—original investigations, deep analysis, and human storytelling.
For innovation professionals, this means doubling down on empathy. Technology is a tool, not a strategy. Innovation starts by understanding the human friction point. When I was at EDF Energy leading the Blue Lab innovation division, our success didn’t come from having the coolest IoT gadgets; it came from understanding that people don’t want to “manage their energy,” they want a warm house and a lower bill. The tech was invisible.
Three Steps for Leaders Today:
- Pivot from Discovery to Action: Ensure your product strategy isn’t just about providing information, but about completing tasks for the user.
- Guard Against the Rot: Implement ethical AI governance that prioritises user trust over short-term “growth hacks” that lead to enshittification.
- Empower Your Teams: Move away from “Project” funding. Fund the Product Tribe and give them the autonomy to iterate as the agentic landscape shifts weekly.
The Agentic Era isn’t about the replacement of human intelligence; it’s about the delegation of friction. The winners won’t be the ones with the largest LLMs, but the ones who use those models to build the most loyal, high-trust relationships with their users. Are you building a bridge to your customers, or just more noise?
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