What can AI automate for a VP Strategy?

AI can help with: First-draft market and competitor research with citations; Summarizing earnings calls, analyst reports, and long filings; Building and explaining initial financial scenario models; Turning rough outlines into structured board and leadership decks; Synthesizing customer and stakeholder interview transcripts into themes.

What stays distinctly human for a VP Strategy?

Still human: Deciding which bets the company actually makes and which it walks away from; Reading the room and aligning a divided leadership team; Judging when data is too thin to trust and pushing for better; Owning accountability for the strategy and its outcomes; Building trust with the CEO, board, and business unit leaders.

AI for VP Strategy: tools, prompts, and how the role is changing

The shift

How AI is changing the VP Strategy role

In 2026, AI handles the heavy lifting of market research, competitor teardowns, and financial scenario modeling that used to take a strategy team days. VP Strategy roles now spend less time gathering and summarizing data and more time pressure-testing assumptions and aligning leadership. Drafting board decks, synthesizing customer interviews, and stress-testing growth plans are increasingly first-drafted by AI and refined by humans.

What AI can take off your plate

First-draft market and competitor research with citations
Summarizing earnings calls, analyst reports, and long filings
Building and explaining initial financial scenario models
Turning rough outlines into structured board and leadership decks
Synthesizing customer and stakeholder interview transcripts into themes

What stays distinctly human

Deciding which bets the company actually makes and which it walks away from
Reading the room and aligning a divided leadership team
Judging when data is too thin to trust and pushing for better
Owning accountability for the strategy and its outcomes
Building trust with the CEO, board, and business unit leaders

Tools

Five AI tools for VP Strategys

ChatGPT (GPT-4o / o1)

A VP Strategy uses it to draft strategy memos, summarize earnings calls, and stress-test a market entry thesis against counterarguments.

Claude (Anthropic)

Useful for analyzing long documents like 10-Ks, analyst reports, and customer interview transcripts in a single pass and pulling out themes.

Perplexity

Used for fast, cited market and competitor research where you need source links you can verify before putting a number in a deck.

Microsoft Copilot in Excel

A VP Strategy uses it to build and explain scenario models, surface trends in financials, and generate formulas from plain language.

Gamma

Turns a strategy outline or memo into a structured first-draft deck for board and leadership reviews.

Prompts

Five prompts to try today

Paste these into Claude or ChatGPT and replace the bracketed parts with your own details.

1. Market entry teardown

Act as a strategy advisor. We are considering entering [market/segment]. Lay out the top 5 risks, the 3 strongest reasons to enter, key incumbents, and what would have to be true for us to win. Flag any assumptions you are uncertain about.

2. Competitor move analysis

Analyze this announcement from [competitor]: [paste text]. Explain what it signals about their strategy, how it affects our position in [market], and 3 possible responses with tradeoffs for each.

3. Board narrative draft

Draft a one-page strategy narrative for our board covering [topic]. Audience is non-operators. Include the situation, the decision we are recommending, the alternatives we rejected, and the expected outcome over [timeframe].

4. Scenario stress test

Here is our growth plan assuming [key assumptions]. Build 3 scenarios: base, downside, and upside. For each, state the trigger conditions, the revenue impact, and the early indicator we should watch.

5. Interview synthesis

Below are notes from [number] customer interviews: [paste]. Identify the recurring themes, the strongest verbatim quotes, where customers disagree, and 3 strategic implications for our roadmap.

A day in your inbox

This is the kind of brief a VP Strategy gets, every weekday morning.

The Morning Current

Weekday morning

✦ Personalized for: VP Strategy

Today's Tool

Use Claude for the 10-K

Paste a competitor's full 10-K into Claude and ask for their stated risks, capital allocation shifts, and any language change from last year. It surfaces in minutes what would take an analyst a half day to read.

Today's Prompt

Pressure-test the thesis

Try: "Argue against our plan to enter [market]. Give me the 5 strongest reasons this fails and what evidence would confirm each." This forces a real counterargument before you bring it to the board.

Today's Trick

Always ask for the uncertainty

End research prompts with "flag where you are guessing or where sources conflict." It keeps you from putting a confident-sounding but unverified number into a leadership deck.

AI for VP Strategys