As companies race to deploy generative AI across their organizations, many executives are betting on a transformative promise: that GenAI will allow employees from one function to seamlessly take on work traditionally performed by specialists in another, and perform it at a level that matches the specialists themselves.
The logic is appealing: If a marketing professional can suddenly perform data analysis, or if an engineer can produce compelling marketing content, companies could achieve unprecedented workforce flexibility and efficiency. But new research suggests that this vision has critical limits that executives must understand before reorganizing their talent strategies.
