Episode - AI Doesn't Replace Your Thinking It Amplifies It Jimi Li

Episode - AI Doesn't Replace Your Thinking It Amplifies It Jimi Li

From 40% Better - Engineering Leadership by Bill

April 17, 2026 · 46 min

About this episode

Jimi Li discusses how to derive real business value from AI and the importance of understanding its various categories.

What does it actually take to get real business value from AI? Jimi Li, CTO at ALM Media, has spent the last three years running AI initiatives inside a company that just went through a successful private equity exit — and he's got the framework to prove what works. From his early days in GE's global leadership program to building L'Oreal's e-commerce platform at scale, Jimi's career has always centred on one question: how does the work you're doing connect to business impact? That same lens is exactly how he approaches AI today. In this episode, Jimi breaks down the three categories of AI value every tech leader needs to understand — productivity, product enhancement, and new revenue streams — and explains why productivity is the most talked-about and the most dangerous if you don't have the right system to capture the gains. He also shares how cross-functional "fusion teams" are collapsing the feedback loop between engineering and the business, why AI fluency is becoming the dividing line between those who thrive and those who get left behind, and what the inflection point for mass adoption actually looks like. Key takeaways: AI value falls into three categories: productivity…

People in this episode

Host: Bill

Guest: Jimi Li

Topics covered

  • AI value
  • business impact
  • productivity
  • cross-functional teams
  • AI fluency

Keywords

  • AI
  • business value
  • productivity gains
  • fusion teams
  • revenue streams

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: ALM Media, GE, L'Oreal

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