Tuomo Peltonen in Talouselämä: AI frees up capacity, but only leadership can turn it into growth

In his opinion piece, Peltonen argues that most leadership teams build their AI business case the same way. They calculate the hours saved, convert them to full-time equivalents, and turn that into euros. It's an easy number for a CFO to approve, but every competitor runs the same math, so those efficiency gains stop being an advantage and become the baseline.

The real advantage, Peltonen states, comes from what a company does with the capacity AI frees up. He uses a simple example: a five-person team now doing what used to take ten. Leadership can shrink the team and cut costs, or keep the expertise and point the extra capacity at growth, through more customers, new markets, or a new business line altogether.

That choice is harder than it sounds. Savings show up on the income statement next quarter, but they also have a ceiling, since there's only so much cost left to cut. Growth takes longer to show up and has no such limit, which is exactly why it demands more from leadership than an approved spreadsheet. This, Peltonen argues, is where AI stops being a technology project and becomes a leadership question. If no one decides where the freed-up time goes, it gets absorbed into meetings and admin, productivity looks better on paper, and the business doesn't actually grow.

That's why, according to Peltonen, AI project goals should be measured against business metrics, not just hours saved. Those metrics could be new customers, new sales, or how fast a new service reaches the market. Growth doesn't mean pushing as much work as possible onto the machine. What matters is where human expertise goes.

AI agents already handle entire work steps and prepare decisions on their own. In sales, for example, that frees a salesperson to spend more time with customers whose needs don't fit a ready-made solution, the kinds of conversations that produce bigger deals and longer customer relationships.

As Peltonen puts it, "AI drives efficiency. People drive growth."

Peltonen also points to a risk that won't show up in this year's budget. The more hands-on work shifts to AI, the more it matters that people still understand what's being done, why, and when the result is actually good enough, judgment that only people can provide. A company that uses AI purely to cut costs can end up cutting the people its future growth depends on, and that expertise isn't something you can buy back in a quarter.

Before approving the next AI project, Peltonen says, leadership should ask two questions, not one. How much will this save? And what will we do with the capacity it frees up? A project without an answer to the second question is only half finished.

Read the full opinion piece in Finnish in Talouselämä.