Simply put, the innovator’s dilemma is whether to continue improving a current product, or develop a new product based on an innovation that disrupts the current product.

Clayton Christensen describes the phenomenon in detail in his classic book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” 

“What often causes this lagging behind [innovation] are two principles of good management…: that you should always listen to and respond to the needs of your best customers, and that you should focus on innovations that promise the highest return,” he says in the introduction.

“That’s why we call it the innovator's dilemma: doing the right thing is doing the wrong thing.” 

In other words, operating your business successfully based on monetizing a prior innovation may be the reason you miss out on monetizing a new innovation that ends up disrupting your business long term. 

Are we witnessing the “innovator’s dilemma” in the AI agent market?

What’s an AI Agent?

First of all, let’s define an AI agent. Everyone is talking about them, and it seems clear that they are the next big step in the evolution of the generative AI market. 

But do we all agree on what an AI agent is? Let’s see what some gen AI industry leaders say.  

OpenAI: Agents are systems that independently accomplish tasks on your behalf. … Applications that integrate LLMs but don’t use them to control workflow execution—think simple chatbots, single-turn LLMs, or sentiment classifiers—are not agents.

Microsoft: An agent can tackle certain tasks with you or for you, from acting as a virtual project manager to handling more complex assignments such as reconciling financial statements to close the books. … An agent takes the power of generative AI a step further, because instead of just assisting you, agents can work alongside you or even on your behalf. 

Google: AI agents are software systems that use AI to pursue goals and complete tasks on behalf of users. They show reasoning, planning, and memory and have a level of autonomy to make decisions, learn, and adapt.

Anthropic: "Agent" can be defined in several ways. Some customers define agents as fully autonomous systems that operate independently over extended periods, using various tools to accomplish complex tasks. Others use the term to describe more prescriptive implementations that follow predefined workflows. At Anthropic, we … draw an important architectural distinction between workflows and agents:

• Workflows are systems where LLMs and tools are orchestrated through predefined code paths.
• Agents, on the other hand, are systems where LLMs dynamically direct their own processes and tool usage, maintaining control over how they accomplish tasks.

So basically some AI vendors describe agents as specific to a task, while others describe them as workflows, and Anthropic says they can be both ... 

[Read Eric's whole Cortex on Intellyx.com.]

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, JUNE 10, 2025 — In today’s confusing and messy enterprise software market, innovative technology solutions that realize real customer results are hard to come by. As an industry analyst firm that focuses on enterprise digital transformation and the disruptive vendors that support it, Intellyx interacts with numerous innovators in the enterprise IT marketplace.

To honor these vendors, Intellyx established the Intellyx Digital Innovator Awards, now in its fifth year, as they celebrate their 11th anniversary since founding in June 2014.

Intellyx bestows this award on every vendor who makes it through Intellyx’s rigorous briefing selection process and delivers a successful briefing that results in coverage that year ... [Find all the IDI2025 winners here.]

Intellyx is not your typical IT industry analyst firm.

Most analyst firms (including all the large ones) provide research into technology markets, providing the vendors in those markets with visibility and awareness among enterprise end-users while selling advice to both vendors and end-users.

This business model works well for them, but we believe it is unethical. How can you advise end-users on which products to buy while simultaneously taking money from those vendors without at least the appearance of unethical behavior? ... [Read the whole BrainBlog here.]

Rolling out a new online payments platform in 2025 seems to be a fool’s errand, for two reasons.

First, online payments are fraught with risk. They are a magnet for fraudsters of every ilk. They suffer under the burden of complex regulatory requirements. No vendor would ever be able to roll out a simple ‘minimum viable product’ version of online payments, as addressing these risks set a high bar for any vendor so inclined.

Second, the market is already full of competitors, especially in the US. From established players like Authorize.net to market leaders like Stripe, US businesses of all sizes already have a variety of online payment platforms to choose from ... [Read the whole BrainBlog here.]

Jason Bloomberg, analyst at Intellyx, shares the promise and the perils of quantum computing, urging companies to prepare for Q-Day now. The fact is, five years is barely enough to mitigate the risks inherent in maintaining classical cryptography, especially for enterprises burdened with “brownfield” or legacy IT infrastructure and applications. 

Read the full article on Quantum Xchange here.

Nearly 12,500 people descended on London for the biggest KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event to date.

ANALYST COVERAGE HIGHLIGHTS: “The size and level of excitement at KubeCon in London underscores how prevalent cloud native computing has become for enterprises around the world.” Jason Bloomberg of Intellyx writing for ... [Read the article here.]