IISc DoMS · March 6, 2026

AI & The New
Management Playbook

Ashish Muralidharan
Product Manager, Microsoft
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"How many of you feel anxious
about your future, your career,
your relevance, because of AI?"
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ACT I
THE TENSION
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The VUCA World
V
Volatility
U
Uncertainty
C
Complexity
A
Ambiguity
"It's a one-way street going upwards."
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The Pattern of Disruption
Shipping
Trade routes
Industrial Revolution
Mechanization
Information Technology
Digitization
Artificial Intelligence
Cognition
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The Economic Equation
Land
Labor
Capital
Technology
"Technology is fundamentally replacing labor."
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ACT II
THE PATTERN
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Technology vs. Labor Cycle
1

Technology arrives

A new paradigm enters the economy

2

Physical labor displaced

Machines replace hands and muscles

3

Operational labor displaced

Software replaces routine processes

4

Intellectual labor displaced

AI replaces reasoning and judgment

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Running Out of Rungs
Physical
95%
Operational
72%
Intellectual
45%
???
15%
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"If you don't need intellectual
labor anymore, what's left?"
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Robots & The Physical Frontier
The last domain is being conquered.
Tesla Optimus
Humanoid general-purpose robot
Unitree
Agile quadruped & humanoid systems
Hyundai / Boston Dynamics
Industrial & logistics automation
"Complete replacement across every dimension."
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5 Levels of AGI
Level Name Status
L1 Conversational Done
L2 Reasoning Done
L3 Agents HERE
L4 AI Organizations Emerging
L5 AGI Unknown
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What Is an Agent?
A system that can pursue a goal by
reasoning, planning, using tools,
and continuously learning.
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ACT III
GROUND ZERO
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Why Software First?
01
100% Digital
No physical constraints. Pure information manipulation, perfectly suited for AI.
02
Signal to Closure
Entire workflow from idea to deployment can be fully automated end-to-end.
03
Rich Training Data
Decades of open-source code, documentation, and patterns to learn from.
.15
"Single engineers spin up 20 agents
that build the entire product
end-to-end."
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Voices from the Field
Karpathy
"Vibe coding is the new paradigm."
Naval
"PM is vibe coding.
Engineering is prompt engineering."
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"The cost to build software
has come down to zero."
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The New Battle
If building is free, what's the competitive advantage?
Distribution
Reaching people at scale. Access to attention and trust.
Marketing
The new job for everyone has become marketing.
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Real Consequences
Block (Square): 50% engineering layoffs
IT stocks: Down 25-30% across the sector
The innovator's dilemma playing out in real-time
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ACT IV
THE ECONOMICS
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The Abundance Thesis
Remove humans
from process
→
Deflation
→
Goods become
cheaper
→
Era of
Abundance
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The AI Value Chain
Energy
Chips
Fabricators
Frontier
Labs
Hyper-
scalers
App
Layer
Distribution
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Where Value Lives
Not the model. The real moats are elsewhere.
Compute
Infrastructure and processing power at scale
Context
Proprietary data, domain expertise, workflows
Distribution
Channels, users, and embedded relationships
"Agents don't need UI."
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ACT V
FROM THE INSIDE
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Microsoft's AI Journey
1
Top-down mandates failed. Blanket directives didn't change behavior.
2
Bottom-up adoption worked. Teams that experimented first saw results.
3
Unlimited compute + incentive alignment = 20x productivity gains.
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Project Nebula
The org I work in at Microsoft.
100
Product Managers
600
Engineers
40-50
Designers
Weekly AI upskilling sessions. "Tribal knowledge" shared across teams.
.27
"The most valuable managers will be
the ones who figure out how to
diffuse AI throughout the company."
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ACT VI
THE NEW PLAYBOOK
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AI Organizations
Design workflows for agents like managers designed them for humans.
PM Workflow Example
Gather signals
→
Synthesize insights
→
Draft spec
→
Build prototype
→
Evaluate & iterate
Each step can be delegated to an agent with the right context and tools.
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Two Skills That Matter
1
Prompting
The ability to instruct precisely. Clear, structured communication with AI systems. Your prompt is your leverage.
2
Evaluations
The ability to measure AI quality. Build feedback loops. Know when output is good enough, and when it's not.
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The Age of the Polymath
"Everyone is becoming a generalist."
The one-person billion-dollar startup
is no longer a thought experiment.
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What You Should Do
01
Set an AI Budget
Dedicate real time and money to AI tools. Treat it as R&D for your own career.
02
Build AI Fluency
Use AI daily. Prompt, evaluate, iterate. Build intuition through repetition.
03
Think in Workflows
Break your job into steps. Identify which steps an agent can own. Design the handoffs.
04
Become a Generalist
Breadth beats depth in an AI world. The more domains you understand, the more you can orchestrate.
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Remember that anxiety?

Go build something.

Ashish Muralidharan
Product Manager, Microsoft · IIM Calcutta
linkedin.com/in/ashish-muralidharan-4a202991
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