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Gap and Zip: procurement's real AI risk is failing to adapt

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Gap and Zip: procurement's real AI risk is failing to adapt

3 Key Points

  1. What happened

    In an HBR webinar, Gap's Tigran Avakian and Zip's Jason Powell discussed how AI is transforming procurement, drawing on findings from a recent HBR-AS white paper.

  2. Why it matters

    The panel framed automation as the lesser danger for procurement staff, arguing that the function's value depends on rethinking its role around AI rather than resisting it.

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Context & Analysis

The webinar places procurement inside a broader pattern: each new frontier AI breakthrough pushes leaders in every function to reassess how work and value creation will change. The speakers' framing is that the firms furthest along augment human intelligence with AI rather than replacing it outright, producing results more capable than either people or machines alone. For procurement specifically, that reframing turns the conversation away from headcount and toward how the function defines the value it adds.

FAQ
Who spoke in the webinar?
Tigran Avakian, VP and Head of Procurement at Gap, and Jason Powell, Managing Director of Enterprise Transformation at Zip, were joined by HBR Senior Editor Todd Pruzan.
What research did the webinar draw on?
The discussion explored key findings from a recent HBR-AS white paper.
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