---
id: "claim-disintermediation-risk"
type: "claim"
source_timestamps: ["§ Customers and suppliers can use gen AI against you."]
tags: ["value-chain", "threats", "professional-services"]
related: ["concept-paradox-of-access", "concept-ai-first-entrants", "prereq-value-chain-dynamics"]
confidence: "high"
testable: true
speakers: ["Bharat N. Anand", "Andy Wu"]
source_url: "https://hbr.org/2025/11/the-gen-ai-playbook-for-organizations"
source_title: "The Gen AI Playbook for Organizations"
sources: ["agentic"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-agentic"
originDay: 6
articleStem: "hbr-cl-87-genai-playbook-orgs"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2025/11/the-gen-ai-playbook-for-organizations"
sourceTitle: "The Gen AI Playbook for Organizations"
---
# Customers and suppliers will use Gen AI to disintermediate incumbents

**Claim (confidence: high · testable):** Universal access to gen AI will upend bargaining power in the value chain.

Corporate clients will use legal-research bots, contract-writing agents, and automated consulting tools to pull professional services — **law, software contracting, M&A consulting, advertising** — in-house, disintermediating the incumbent firms that previously performed these tasks for them. This is the value-chain expression of the [[concept-paradox-of-access|Paradox of Access]] and is reinforced by the rise of [[concept-ai-first-entrants|AI-first entrants]]. Reasoning about it requires [[prereq-value-chain-dynamics|value-chain bargaining fundamentals]].

**Enrichment / supporting signals:** Legal-tech platforms like [[entity-harvey|Harvey]] are already adopted inside in-house legal departments to draft and review routine documents; gen AI is increasingly embedded in productivity suites (email, CRM, ERP), letting internal teams do analysis and content generation once reserved for specialized agencies.

**Countervailing nuance:** Complex M&A, high-stakes litigation, and top-tier strategy remain relationship- and expertise-driven; regulatory, liability, and talent constraints can slow full in-housing; and incumbents may themselves become AI-native and move *up* the value chain. So disintermediation is likely **partial and domain-specific**, strongest in routine, codifiable service work (the [[concept-quality-control-zone|Quality Control Zone]]).

**Assessment:** Directionally supported and plausible; full disintermediation is more likely partial and domain-specific.