Successful companies around the world have long tried to build barriers around their technology and information advantages, believing that exclusivity helps long-term profit. Yet rapid advances in AI are leading to shorter technology and product life cycles that are upending old notions of “long-term competitive advantage” and demand new business thinking, Kmind Consulting Chairman Noah Xie said at an executive strategy forum held in Silicon Valley earlier this month.

Xie, a long-time leading China business consultant, sees lessons for today’s world from the Chinese military classic, “The Art of War , ” and believes cultural factors are a more important ingredient than ever in global business success. “The Art of War’’ ideas about positioning, timing and strategy are valid in today’s business world,” Xie said at the forum. Through powerful and disruptive, AI “can’t perceive the human heart,” said Xie, recalling the expression: “Those who win hearts win the world.” He elaborates on his approach in a new book out in October, “The Essence of Strategy.”

Xie founded Kmind in 2015, after an earlier career as an executive at Trout & Partners. Its more than 200 China customers over the years have included Anta, one of the world’s largest sportswear brands, Miniso, an up-and-coming retail giant, Feihe, one of China’s largest dairy products suppliers, and Bosideng, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of down jackets. Evidence of Kmind’s successful promotions hangs on the walls of the company’s headquarters at the Shanghai World Financial Center.

Kmind decided to hold an event in Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley– its first in the U.S. tech hub -- because Xie feels standard Western marketing approaches are coming up short in today’s AI-influenced business environment where barriers to product development and product launch times are falling.

“How do you build a distinctive brand in the customer’s mind and avoid homogeneous competition on technology?” he posed to the audience of more than 100 business guests. “This is precisely the area that Western strategy frameworks have largely failed to cover,” Xie said.

Human beings are facing “profound changes” that are reshaping the business landscape and bringing challenges to traditional business strategies born in an era of product scarcity. First among them is intensifying competition. “We have moved from an era of product scarcity into a new era of oversupply,” he said. “How companies stand out amid fierce market competition has become an urgent problem.”

Second, media channels through which companies communicate with customers are changing rapidly. “Media have become globalized, decentralized, personalized and diversified,” Xie says. “How to effectively communicate amid a sea of information has become a major challenge for enterprises.” And third, is the reshaping of the global innovation landscape by AI, big data and cloud computing, he added.

Companies that focus solely on “technology first” judgements are making a mistake because even those tools are rapidly becoming commoditized and may lead to a “homogenous bubble.”

Says Xie: “Technology can rapidly generate products, but that does not equal consumer choice.” Kmind’s chairman further believes AI models don’t easily appreciate human factors in business such as timing. “AI excels at numbers but is weak on judgement,” Xie said.