Cognitive Enterprises, Autonomous Firms, Platformisation, and Trust as a Service are Poised to Shape the Future of Work

When professionals across a variety of different industries look into the proverbial crystal ball, they reach a similar conclusion: the nature of work will change in the next 10 years. 

According to recent global research, global leaders overwhelmingly believe that AI-powered scenarios such as cognitive enterprises, platformisation, autonomous firms, and trust-as-a-service will become a reality within the next decade. 

Most expect these scenarios to have transformational impact on their organisations – but it’s worth taking a closer look at the data to better understand what that change might look like, which organisations are most optimistic about the coming change, and what it will take to succeed in this next era of work.

The evolution that lies ahead

First things first: what do these terms – cognitive enterprises, platformisation, autonomous firms, and trust-as-a-service – actually mean? 

Fortunately, the survey of 3000+ professionals that forms the basis of the global research report provided a specific definition for each one, to ensure that respondents were on the same page.

Cognitive enterprises are defined as a scenario where firms evolve to leverage AI to simulate legal, regulatory, and business outcomes as a service – essentially being paid to provide predictions. 

Autonomous firms were defined as a scenario where AI agents conduct the standardised or repeatable document work (think: creating an NDA or a lease agreement) while professionals focus on strategic oversight and ethics. 

Platformisation is a scenario where traditional professional services firms are replaced by digital platforms offering modular, on-demand business and consulting services where professionals work as independent experts.

Finally, trust as a service was defined as professional services firms offering trust services as a business – basically, being paid to verify what’s “real” and what isn’t, given the volume of deepfakes and misinformation from AI-generated content.

Different maturity levels, strikingly different outlooks

Here’s where things get interesting. The study classified respondents by placing them along a knowledge maturity curve, from least mature to most mature.

All respondents, regardless of maturity level, were consistent in their response that these four scenarios were likely in the next 10 years. Where they diverged – greatly – was on whether these emergent scenarios would have a positive impact on their business or not.

Among the most mature enterprises, 88% to 92% felt that the impact of these scenarios on their business would be positive. Among the least mature, that number sinks to a notably lower range of 55% to 65%. That gap reflects two fundamentally different outlooks on the future of work.

Maturity breeds confidence

What accounts for this huge gap, where nearly twice as many members of one group are excited and optimistic about the unfolding of these four scenarios and the impact they will have?

The most mature organisations are focused on the quality of their data. They’ve made ongoing investments to establish a core knowledge foundation that newer technologies like AI can be layered on top of.  This extends to people and processes: they have an approach to their human intelligence that captures it and ensures that it can be accessed to support key business goals and objectives. 

Additionally, there is an openness to technology and change that is woven into the business culture of more mature organisations. In less‑mature organisations, end users tend to resist new tools – only about 40% eventually embrace them, according to the research – whereas users in more mature organisations often adopt technology even before it’s formally rolled out. 

Together, these aspects make the most mature organisations confident that scenarios such as cognitive enterprises, platformisation, autonomous firms, and trust-as-a-service will have a positive impact on their business.

A look at the future of work

With that foundation in mind, it becomes easier to examine how these scenarios are poised to transform work.

Start with the cognitive enterprise scenario, which is largely around predictive capabilities. AI can help model different scenarios and outcomes in ways that the human brain simply cannot. However, AI still requires human judgment and/or intelligence as its source material to deliver value – favouring the more mature firms that have processes in place to effectively capture it. This same human judgment will likely still play a role in validating outputs – the predictions actually provided to clients – underscoring the importance of the “human in the loop”.

The autonomous firms scenario – which incorporates agentic workflows – extends this idea further by requiring not just a core knowledge foundation but also a precise understanding of their own workflows and processes. Without a clear map of how work actually moves through the organisation, there is no foundation on which to design or automate agentic behaviour. 

In the platformisation scenario, it’s easy to imagine enterprises shifting away from commoditised work products – like a standard legal form or relatively uncomplicated financial agreement – and delivering them through a consumption model, much like SaaS companies do today. At the same time, they can continue to offer higher value expertise and guidance services that help them maintain their profit margins. Again, none of this is possible without the initial investment in building a knowledge foundation, which mature organisations have undertaken.

Finally, there’s the trust as a service scenario. While this might not be a standalone business offering, it seems likely that this will become another foundation that is required in order to produce a reliable service offering. So, there will be the data foundation, the governance layer, the AI infrastructure layer – and now, a trust layer.

The bottom line? AI is going to enable some exciting scenarios to come to pass, but not all enterprises are equally positioned to embrace these new business models and service offerings. 

Even if AI has the power to help organisations deliver these new services at scale, there’s still a fundamental dependence on human intelligence, judgment, and knowledge. The organisations that systematically capture and apply their institutional knowledge will be the ones most capable of transforming their business and adapting to the future of work that will take shape over the coming decade.