By Brigid Archibald, VP Japan & APAC, Miro
Over the past two years, organisations large and small have consistently asked one question about AI: How can it make us more productive?
Since its emergence, AI has become remarkably good at helping us write faster, summarise meetings, automate repetitive tasks, and find information in seconds. Today, there exists a plethora of AI tools that have undoubtedly changed how most of us work.
But too many organisations have fallen into the trap of prioritising individual effectiveness at the expense of team success. The reality is that very few business outcomes are created by one person alone. Innovation happens when teams challenge ideas, build on each other’s thinking, and bring together diverse perspectives to solve problems. Yet most AI tools today are still designed and used in a way that supports individuals, instead of the teamwork upon which successful organisations are built.
That disconnect is becoming increasingly clear. Research by Miro and Forrester found that 75% of business leaders believe today’s AI tools are too focused on individual work rather than helping teams collaborate. Almost four in ten say this is already having the effect of reducing the return they’re seeing from AI investments. In other words, people might be working faster, but organisations aren’t necessarily working smarter.
Collaboration is where the real opportunity lies
The question to ask AI now is not whether it can save someone ten minutes writing a report or summarising meeting notes. It is: How can AI help entire teams make better decisions together? We need to 10x the organisation. This is where the next wave of AI innovation will be won.
Miro’s research found that 89% of leaders see improving collaboration and teamwork as critical to achieving their business goals. Yet many organisations are using AI in ways that actually make collaboration harder.
Employees jump between standalone AI assistants, messaging platforms, documents and project tools, losing context every time they switch. In fact, 69% of leaders said that moving between work tools and AI tools interrupts workflows and creates unnecessary friction.
If AI sits outside the way teams naturally work, it becomes another destination rather than an enabler. The answer isn’t adding another AI tool to the stack, but rather embedding them into the workflows where collaboration already happens.
The future of AI is ‘collective intelligence’
We’ve spent years talking about artificial intelligence, but it’s time we started talking more about collective intelligence.
The organisations seeing the greatest value from AI won’t simply have employees who know how to write clever prompts. They’ll have teams that use AI to think together, test ideas faster, surface insights from shared knowledge, and make more confident decisions.
This is a fundamentally different role for AI than what we’re seeing now. Imagine a product team brainstorming new features: rather than one person asking an AI chatbot for ideas in isolation, AI can draw on previous customer research, workshop notes, project plans and design thinking sessions to help the entire team build on existing knowledge. The technology becomes part of the collaborative process, not a shortcut that potentially compromises the result.
Better collaboration also means more inclusive workplaces
There’s another reason this shift matters—the way many organisations collaborate today isn’t always equitable. We have all been in meetings where just a handful of voices dominate the conversation, while great ideas from quieter team members either don’t get the attention they deserve, or aren’t contributed.
When AI is designed around collaboration rather than individual output, it has the potential to make participation more inclusive. Shared AI workspaces can capture ideas before meetings begin, integrate contributions from everyone equally, identify themes across multiple perspectives, and ensure valuable input doesn’t get overlooked simply because someone wasn’t the most confident person in the room.
For women, whose ideas are often at risk of being interrupted, overlooked or attributed to others in workplace settings, this is particularly significant. The same opportunity exists for neurodiverse employees, distributed teams, and anyone who has traditionally found conventional collaboration less accessible.
When utilised correctly, collaborative AI has the potential to create environments where contributions are recognised based on their value, not on who delivered them or who was most confident.
Rethink what AI success looks like
For too long, we’ve measured AI success through the lens of individual productivity—in other words, how much faster someone can complete a task.
This is an important metric, but it isn’t the one that will determine long-term business success. The organisations that thrive over the next decade will be those that use AI to strengthen collaboration, accelerate innovation, and unlock the collective expertise of their teams.
