Want to win in the age of AI? You can either build it or build your business with it

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers interesting career opportunities to both technology whizzes and business mavens. Unlike previous types of technologies, there are two tracks one can pursue — either building AI or employing AI to build their businesses.  

Recent research conducted by Aditya Challapally, Microsoft’s applied science lead, explores these two tracks to AI success.

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For IT professionals, it means delivering solutions rapidly to stay ahead of increasing fast business changes — the technical career track. “IT professionals should actively explore new tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, and others to stay on the cutting edge,” Challapally told ZDNET. In many organizations, I’ve seen developers quickly gain a reputation as 10x-coders simply by leveraging these tools effectively, and that advantage tends to persist even as others catch up.”

From a business perspective, generative AI cannot operate in a technical vacuum — AI-savvy subject matter experts are needed to adapt the technology to specific business requirements — that’s the domain expertise career track. “As AI models become more commoditized, specialized domain knowledge becomes increasingly valuable,” Challapally said. “What sets true experts apart is their deep understanding of their specific industry combined with the ability to identify where and how gen AI can be effectively applied within it.” Often, he warned, bots alone cannot relay such specific knowledge. 

Interviewing 50 business leaders on their need for AI acumen, Challapally found that in-depth knowledge of AI is in high demand — and the needs for technical chops and business savvy are converging. “Leaders rated this as even more important than traditional project management or business-related duties like bringing a compelling product vision or coordinating well,” he said.   

How do the best non-technical people succeed and grow their careers fast in AI?  (Average ratings on a scale of 1-10)

• Understands tech in depth (10)
• Product vision (7)
• Can do or does a product requirement (6)
• Gathering and defending requirements (5)

Business leaders cite the most intense need at this time “is for professionals who bridge both worlds — those who deeply understand business requirements while also grasping the technical fundamentals of AI,” he said. Rather than pure technologists, they seek individuals who combine traditional business acumen with technical literacy. These are the type of people who can craft product visions, understand basic coding concepts, and gather sophisticated requirements that align technology capabilities with business goals.”  

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For those on the technical side, it’s important “to master the art of prompting these tools to deliver accurate results,” said Challapally. “I really think that the real strength for IT professionals now lies in their ability to manage various coding agents and tools efficiently.” 

At the same time, he’s noticed that “some experienced developers tend to underestimate these new tools, dismissing them as gimmicks for novices. However, these tools can significantly streamline smaller workflows and coding tasks, and those who do take advantage of them find them extremely helpful.”

Top professionals, he continued, “dedicate time each week to experiment with emerging models, frameworks, and tools, even if they discard the vast majority of them.”

Challapally provided the following advice to technology professionals:  

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• Stick to the fundamental software development principles. “These tools make traditional software engineering principles of modular design, good systems design thinking, and understanding product requirements even more important,” he said. “I’ve seen IT professionals use super-fast development, enabled by AI, plus good product or business thinking to supercharge their careers.”

• Learn. “Take two to four weeks and focus on foundational knowledge,” he said. “Learn the basics of AI and gen AI, get familiar with popular tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, and develop essential prompt engineering skills. With a little effort, these LLMs can be prompted to do great things.”

• Become a prompt master. “Prompting is the most crucial skill for successfully using gen AI and it typically takes four to six weeks to master,” he advised. “Professionals should progress from simple input/output tasks to advanced techniques like multi-channel prompting and JSON formatting. The goal is to achieve consistent, repeatable outputs from LLMs and accurately assess gen AI capabilities for specific tasks.”

• Choose an advanced path. “Once you have the technical basics down, you’ll need to decide how to specialize depending on your career context,” he said. “Enterprise professionals will likely want to focus on systems architecture, data flow, and gen AI integration. Independent professionals, on the other hand, need to master low-code/no-code tools and learn basic coding with the help of LLMs, enabling rapid prototyping and development.” 

On the business side, things aren’t yet at the point where hard technical skills may no longer be necessary for application development. “AI today is pretty good at building simple apps — getting about 80% of the way there,” said Challapally. “But finishing that last 20% still needs real technical know-how for debugging and making things work in the real world. This might improve to 95% soon, but only for straightforward applications.”

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For business professionals, Challapally provides the following advice:

• Map your industry’s AI landscape. “Spend two to three weeks studying existing gen AI applications in your field,” he advised. “Understand successful implementations, failed attempts, and emerging opportunities.”
• Understand user behavior. “Invest time in understanding how your industry’s users interact with AI systems,” he said. “You can do this easily by trying out major AI tools in your field.”
• Know how to market. “As gen AI apps proliferate, one of the best things a business professional can learn to do is to learn how to make your gen AI app stand out and attract attention.”