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Like almost every business owner I talk to right now, my clients and I have been moving fast to adopt AI — into workflows, into products, into how we make decisions. And somewhere in the middle of that push, a question started nagging at me that I couldn’t shake.
If I’m building something new on top of AI — a process, a workflow, proprietary logic that gives my business an edge — how do I protect it? Not in theory. Protect it for real, in a world where a competitor can watch what I do and rebuild it in a fraction of the time.
That question led me to Richard Spitz, Managing Director of Strong Force Innovation Portfolios, and one of the most prolific inventors, strategists, technologists, and patent writers working in AI today. What he told me shifted how I think about business risk in the AI era.
His opening point: AI isn’t just changing how fast competitors can copy you — it’s dismantling the protection mechanisms businesses have relied on for decades.
“For decades, companies protected their position through software, proprietary workflows, trade secrets, specialized labor, customer relationships, and operational scale. Those advantages still matter, but AI is weakening many of them at the same time. Software can be built faster. Features can be copied more quickly. Expertise can be automated. Workflows can be inferred. The question is no longer simply whether a company will adopt AI — it’s whether it can adopt AI without surrendering the assets that make it valuable in the first place.”
This landed for me personally. I spent 23 years at Rockwell Automation — global leader in industrial automation. The systems my teams built were complex, hard-won, and deeply proprietary. In the AI era, the barrier to replicating that kind of system is collapsing. Not gone — but collapsing.
What replaces it? Richard’s argument — which I’ve spent time stress-testing — is that the only durable protection left is ownership of the architecture controlling how AI operates inside the business. Not the models. Not the software. The control layer underneath all of it.
Contracts can’t stop an independent developer from building the same thing. Trade secrets become vulnerable as AI gets better at inferring operating methods from observable behavior. Code can be rebuilt. But a patent on the architecture itself creates a property right that applies even when a competitor builds something entirely on their own.
SO, HERE’S WHAT I’M TELLING YOU
Adopt AI or fall behind — but adopt it carelessly and you give away the very things that made you valuable.
I’m a believer in the scientific method, so I’m treating Richard’s thesis as something to disprove, not accept at face value. So far, I can’t disprove it. And the closer I look, the more I think most business owners haven’t asked this question yet — which means the window to act is still open, but it won’t be forever.
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The founder and managing partner of DodsonMC who brings: 32 years of experience enhancing operations for Fortune 500 companies. A Vanderbilt Executive MBA and an Industrial Engineering undergraduate degree. Over 20 years of success in owning and growing his own businesses. A vast network of partners that have driven accelerated results.
Kip DodsonFounder
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