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What is a Frontier firm and how do we get there?

19 Oct, 2026

AI is changing, but this isn't about chasing the latest shiny thing

We’ve spent the last few years talking about how AI could change the way we work. Now, that conversation is starting to shift. The question isn’t simply“Are you using AI?” anymore. It’s“How deeply is it actually built into the way your business works?”

That’s where the idea of the Frontier Firm comes in.

Microsoft uses the term to describe a new kind of organisation built around on-demand intelligence, where people work alongside AI agents and technology becomes increasingly embedded into everyday work.

Sounds futuristic. But the journey there is probably more familiar than you’d think.

 

So, what actually makes a Frontier Firm?

Being a Frontier Firm isn’t about occasionally asking Copilot to summarise an email or having a couple of people experimenting with ChatGPT. It’s about looking at how work happens across the organisation and finding where technology can meaningfully improve it. That could mean automating repetitive processes, connecting information that’s currently scattered across different systems, giving people easier access to useful data or starting to use AI agents alongside teams.

Microsoft describes the emerging model as AI-operated but human-led, combining machine intelligence with human judgement rather than simply replacing one with the other. And that’s an important distinction. The clever bit isn’t just having AI. It’s changing how you work with it.

Journey to the Frontier Firm

The Journey Happens in Stages

Microsoft describes the journey towards a Frontier Firm as a progression, beginning with AI acting as an assistant and moving towards humans working with AI agents.

In practice, though, businesses don’t need to transform everything overnight.

Start by asking some much less glamorous questions:

Is your data easy to access?
Do your systems actually talk to each other?
Are people still copying information between spreadsheets?
Which repetitive jobs eat up people’s time every week?
Could AI access the information it would need to actually be useful?

Those are pretty much the same readiness questions you created for your Frontier campaign. Because if the foundations aren’t there, throwing more AI at the problem probably isn’t the answer.

Start with the problem, not the AI

Rather than saying“We need an AI agent, what should we do with it?”, flip the question around.

What’s slowing people down?

Maybe someone spends hours putting together the same report every month. Maybe customer information lives across several systems. Maybe employees spend far too long searching for information. Or perhaps there’s a process everyone accepts as manual simply because“that’s how we’ve always done it.”

Those are the conversations that uncover genuinely useful opportunities for automation and AI.

The technology comes afterwards.

Your data matters more than you might think

AI is only part of the Frontier Firm picture.

If your information is scattered between spreadsheets, ageing systems, inboxes and folders that only Janet knows how to find, you’ve already got a hurdle. One of the most practical steps towards becoming a more AI-enabled business is therefore decidedly un-futuristic: sort out the foundations first.

Connect systems where it makes sense. Look at how information moves around the business. Reduce unnecessary manual processes. Make sure people can access the right information securely. Then AI has something useful to work with.

You don't have to become a Frontier Firm tomorrow

The idea of AI agents, automation and completely new ways of working can make transformation sound enormous.

It doesn’t have to be. Microsoft’s research points to a broader shift in how organisations combine people and AI, but every organisation’s transformation will look different.

For most businesses, the sensible place to start isn’t “How do we become a Frontier Firm?”

It’s: “What’s one thing we could do better?”

Fix that. Learn from it. Then find the next thing. Before long, you’ve stopped simply using new technology and started changing how the business works. And that’s really what becoming a Frontier Firm is about.

 

Ready to take the next step?

You don’t need to have the whole AI journey mapped out before you start.

Whether your next step is connecting your systems, getting more from your data, automating a frustrating process or exploring where AI could genuinely help, String can help you work out what makes sense for your business, and what doesn’t.

Ready to take the next step?
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