--- title: Why most companies aren't seeing productivity gains from... description: Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code, draws a parallel between 1990s computerization patterns and today's AI adoption. Companies that simply bolt AI onto... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/why-most-companies-aren-t-seeing-productivity-gains-from-ai-according-to-claude-code-s-creator-tfdkfxnjn twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Why most companies aren't seeing productivity gains from AI, according to Claude Code's creator | daily.dev og:description: Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code, draws a parallel between 1990s computerization patterns and today's AI adoption. Companies that simply bolt AI onto... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/why-most-companies-aren-t-seeing-productivity-gains-from-ai-according-to-claude-code-s-creator-tfdkfxnjn og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/tFDKFxnjn.png og:image:alt: Why most companies aren't seeing productivity gains from AI, according to Claude Code's creator og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Why most companies aren't seeing productivity gains from AI, according to Claude Code's creator **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 2 min read · 3 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code, draws a parallel between 1990s computerization patterns and today's AI adoption. Companies that simply bolt AI onto existing workflows see no productivity gains, just as companies that bought computers but kept paper processes saw none. The ones that benefit fundamentally rebuild their operations around the new tool, identifying and eliminating bottlenecks one by one. The key insight: AI must be placed at the center of operations, not treated as an optional add-on. ## Content Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, has a useful explanation for why so many companies integrate AI tools and then wonder why nothing changed. He points to a Harvard Business Review study from 1996 about the early days of computerization. The pattern back then split companies into two groups. The first group bought computers but kept doing everything the same way. Paper processes stayed intact, filing cabinets stayed full, and one person was assigned to sit at the computer and enter data. Everyone else ignored it. These companies saw no productivity gains - they'd just created a new job. The second group did something harder. They put the computer at the center of operations, digitized their records, and threw away the filing cabinets. Then they found the first bottleneck in their workflow and fixed it. Then the next one. They kept going until the whole business process had been rebuilt around the new tool. Cherny thinks the same dynamic is playing out now with AI. Companies that park Claude in the corner - letting one person query it occasionally while everything else runs as before - aren't going to see much. The ones actually getting results are treating it as the center of their operations and working through bottlenecks one at a time. It's a simple point, but easy to miss when the temptation is to add AI as a layer on top of existing processes rather than rethink the processes themselves. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Is AI killing productivity?](https://daily.dev/posts/is-ai-killing-productivity--k9rfokmvg) · InfoWorld · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why aren't AI productivity gains higher?](https://daily.dev/posts/why-aren-t-ai-productivity-gains-higher--sr7fzwugo) · Engineering Enablement · 6 upvotes · 2 comments --- Tags: [#productivity](https://daily.dev/tags/productivity), [#claude-code](https://daily.dev/tags/claude-code) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-most-companies-aren-t-seeing-productivity-gains-from-ai-according-to-claude-code-s-creator-tfdkfxnjn) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Why most companies aren't seeing productivity gains from AI, according to Claude Code's creator","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-most-companies-aren-t-seeing-productivity-gains-from-ai-according-to-claude-code-s-creator-tfdkfxnjn","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-most-companies-aren-t-seeing-productivity-gains-from-ai-according-to-claude-code-s-creator-tfdkfxnjn"},"datePublished":"2026-08-02T09:02:46.807Z","dateModified":"2026-08-03T06:29:31.552Z","description":"Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code, draws a parallel between 1990s computerization patterns and today's AI adoption. 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