PERSPECTIVE
The complexity dividend: Turning scale into revenue, margin and market share
10-MINUTE READ
December 5, 2025
In brief
- Large companies are often encumbered by their size, with operations so complex and layered they have trouble moving fast and making quick decisions.
- AI is built for complex environments, making it possible to address performance variability and inertia—two forces that allow complexity to grow unchecked.
- Today’s dual imperative: embrace rather than try to remove complexity, and rethink the role of AI to turn operational complexity into a competitive strength.
Bigger is better, except when it isn’t
For many organizations, their scale—something that should be a competitive advantage—often turns into a burden. Operations can get so deep and layered that decision-making slows to a crawl, innovation gets sidetracked, costs creep up and margin leaks out.
Complexity doesn’t have to be a liability. With AI tools supporting human roles, businesses now have the framework they need to capitalize on “good” complexity that drives margin and market differentiation while identifying and addressing “bad” complexity that slows innovation and drains profit. AI is the link that turns an organization’s scale and complexity into its strongest competitive advantage.
Artificial intelligence allows companies to transform layers of business complexity into their strongest competitive asset.
Three places to start
01
Lean into complexity, don’t run from it
Not all complexity is bad.
Good complexity underpins innovation and market differentiation, allowing organizations to deliver unique products, services and solutions to specific customers or regions. Bad complexity creeps in unnoticed and compounds over time, clogging decision-making and dragging down productivity and profits. Differentiating between the two is the first step in turning complexity into an advantage.
Fuel growth, not overhead
Organizations that learn to manage complexity can serve more customers and markets. They’re better equipped to adapt to local nuances. They can launch new services faster while creating highly personalized experiences. Their underlying complexity becomes a growth engine rather than a limitation.
For industry leaders that get it right, the prize is growth—in market share, margins, innovation and reputation—for doing better work in entirely new ways.
02
Orchestrate workflows and amplify good complexity
More complexity—good or bad—creates more work. The promise of AI is simple: it takes on that extra work.
AI is the key to moving fast without losing control. It embeds itself across an organization and its value chain to watch for drift, adapt processes on the fly and amplify what’s working. It allows growing companies to be the nimble, responsive powerhouses they were meant to be.
Flip the 80:20 rule
Organizations often focus on the 20% of categories, vendors, business units or processes that drive most results. The “tail” of 80% is often left unmanaged and its potential goes untapped. AI flips the 80:20 rule. By analyzing large volumes of both structured and unstructured data, it reveals value that is buried in the tail under layers of complexity. Decision-makers are better informed—so their decisions are more complete, precise and impactful.
Accenture research shows that vast potential for savings, productivity and revenue exist in the tail, waiting to be surfaced with AI. For example, our analysis suggests that companies can see 17% to 22% average productivity gains simply by increasing their visibility into investment performance and spending data, including the “tail”. For an average large company with USD $10 billion in annual revenues, this translates into gains of $50 million to $120 million in cost-transformation gains. Similar opportunities exist with commercial investments related to operations, marketing, pricing and innovation.
With greater visibility on investments and spend, companies can see up to an additional 22% in productivity gains.
03
Overcome inertia to shift behaviors and unlock insights
Few organizations have created a culture of experimentation that encourages curiosity and rewards new ways of working. To harness the kind of insight that drives innovation, organizations need to give people a safe space to share work and explore new ideas, even if those ideas lead nowhere or challenge the status quo. Workers at all levels—from the C-suite to those closest to the customer—should be treated as owners, empowered to confer, and decide and act. Within that framework, insight can blossom in partnership with AI.
Invest in continuous, leader-led learning
Success with AI rests on continuous learning: Workers must be free to experiment, try new things, fail, try again and share results. And the organization must invest in continuous upskilling at every level—up to and including the C-suite—so decision-makers have the skills they need for the AI era.
Rethinking complexity in the age of AI
Growing organizations face a dual imperative: rather than try to eliminate complexity, they should embrace its potential as a competitive advantage and revenue generator. And rather than thinking of it as a tool for driving efficiency or productivity, they should view AI as a catalyst that transforms complexity into a differentiated strength.
By leaning into complexity, orchestrating workflows and shifting behaviors, organizations can transform their scale, complexity and the power of AI into a driving force for long-term success.
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